Do Banks Need to Grow their HPC Estates?
Well, the International Data Corporation certainly seem to think so. The assertion comes in a white paper, sponsored by IBM, released earlier this year.
https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/ZZEEMEAP
Till recently, I would have said that’s a pretty safe bet. The massive increase in regulatory risk requirements post 2008 has led to a pretty increase in compute requirements for FSI. Even as those same banks divested from the more complex (and compute intensive) derivative financial products. The increased compute costs instead coming largely thanks to the increases in portfolio risk analytics (CVA, CAV and XVA) instead.
I’d be less inclined to take that bet today.
What I found far more interesting though, is Figure 1 (on page 5) on the paper. IDC are of the opinion that cloud usage will drop over the coming years. But so will on prem.
So where’s the compute going? Co-location and managed service providers they reckon. Its an interesting take and certainly only that is backed up by a some high profile cloud exits from the likes of 37signals and Ahrefs. Ok Ahrefs just didn’t go into the cloud rather than exited it.
The paper finishes by highlighting the long lead times and complex solutions required for cloud adoption for HPC in FSI and the comparatively shorter timescales for the use of a SaaS product. Which the sponsor of the paper just happens to offer 😊
