What is cloud-based digital banking?

Cloud technology can reshape digital banking services, making banking simpler and more convenient for customers. However, for many banks, the business processes and technology that support it are far from simple. On the technology front, digital banking already represents an increasingly complex set of connected systems that need to work together across disparate platforms. For the business, it is digitizing processes across channels that were once human-based. For the digital teams at the forefront, they need cloud technology that breaks down these barriers and can be more responsive to a rapidly evolving market by streamlining integration and deployments.

Cloud technology has other benefits besides getting new digital features in the hands of customers more quickly. It can also help digital operations meet their rigorous service obligations more efficiently with automatic provisioning, consistent policy enforcement, and traffic monitoring. This not only saves time in identifying and remediating issues, but also provides a reliable and consistent experience for your bank’s customers. Using cloud technology to make your digital operations simpler not only makes sense commercially, but can also reduce reputational damage from service disruptions.

The goal for many leading digital banks is to move towards a composable banking architecture supported by microservices and micro-frontends which aim to make the bank more adaptive and responsive.  Adopting this architecture with static infrastructure is difficult to do efficiently as the components are constantly being updated.  Container-based architectures address this challenge by standardizing on packaging and deployment, and shielding application teams from the complexity of the underlying infrastructure so that they can rapidly update their components more frequently.  

However, for most banks their digital banking service is  based on a mixture of capabilities that span multiple generations of technology.  Fortunately, banks can also bring their existing virtualized machines within their cloud platform alongside their cloud-native components and operate these components consistently while they gradually migrate to their target architecture. This can help to meet service level expectations by providing a consistent operating environment.

Digital architectures continue to evolve and so does the technology that supports them. Kubernetes has given rise to marketplaces that make it easier to find and consume new software without the friction of the past. This helps digital architects better respond to market demand by exploring new technologies quickly and scaling them as needed.