Ring Fencing to trigger growth of Cloud Computing in the Financial Industry

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Recently, I identified the top 5 triggers for the emergence of industry-specific clouds.

• Services Eco-system
• Modernization Strategies
• Peak Loads
• Compliance
• Security

All these triggers were generic across industries even though some may be more applicable than the others to certain industries.

Since writing this post, various phenomena and business events have come to my attention that are acting as triggers for the emergence and adoption of cloud computing within a specific industry.

Ring-fencing is one such trigger within the Financial Industry.

As outlined by Jill Treanor in the Business section of the Guardian, Ring Fencing is the concept which requires banks to take steps that would insulate high-street banking businesses from their riskier investment banking arms. This requirement immediately has significant implications on the data. Banking institutions will now need to segregate the data broadly into three categories:  a) data that is resident within the ring-fence; b) data that is outside; and c) data that is used across both areas. This requirement of mixed environment immediately suggests a healthy mix of converged solutions in the cloud across private, public and hybrid environments.

Karl Flinders in his post on Inside Outsourcing highlights an article by Daniel Wakefield, which outlines the striking similarity between the banking industry and the government sector in adopting the shared services model. Karl's post reinforces the Services Eco-system trigger that I had outlined in my post. The article draws a fascinating parallel with the public sector in the shared services space.

In other words, even though ring-fencing as a cloud trigger is specific to the financial industry, the approach that this industry takes to transform to the cloud computing could be generic across multiple industries.

Karl’s article triggers several questions in my mind:

• What are the other triggers that you can think of for the Financial Industry?
• Is there an equivalent concept to Ring-Fencing that could serve as a trigger in other industries?
• Is the CIO the Ring-Master in such cases?
• Do any of the generic triggers that I have mentioned apply to your industry?

Please leave me a comment to let me know your thoughts.