As we approach the second annual Financial Cloud Summit on March 7, 2024, at King’s Place in London, Finextra is engaging with industry experts who will be attending and speaking at this year’s conference.
Niamh Curran, a reporter at Finextra Research, reflects on her experience at last year’s event and shares her anticipation for this year’s summit. At Financial Cloud Summit 2023, Curran moderated a panel on prioritizing security within cloud infrastructure. She emphasizes the importance of strong security foundations from cloud providers in fostering trustworthy relationships with users, making discussions on various security models particularly insightful as the industry transitions to a cloud-based approach.
Regarding the key themes for this year’s summit, Curran notes that despite inflation and other macroeconomic challenges, the cloud market continues to thrive. "Financial services now have little choice about moving to the cloud. However, they still have options on how to do it," she states.
She highlights the growing importance of low/no-code solutions in the cloud sector, providing attractive options for both startups and established companies. Curran also points to the rise of embedded finance and the expanding applications for data, AI, and generative AI as factors that will drive increased cloud adoption. While there is a burgeoning interest in these technologies, many organizations remain cautious in their approach.
"I believe that caution is warranted, but the use cases for generative AI and machine learning are becoming clearer, including in certain embedded finance products. I’m not certain that this will be the year of widespread adoption, but the exploration of these technologies will certainly increase. Since both generative AI and machine learning require vast amounts of data, cloud infrastructure will play a crucial role even at the investigative stage, leading to a potential uptick in cloud usage for AI-related applications," Curran concludes.
Looking ahead to the Financial Cloud Summit, Curran is particularly excited about the intriguing panels featuring notable thought leaders. She is especially interested in the panel titled "Technical talent: how can the developer community be actively nurtured?" As cloud technology becomes integral to banking infrastructure, the focus on nurturing talent will be critical across all sectors. Financial institutions should prioritize investment in skilled professionals who can develop a robust and secure cloud infrastructure.
For more information about Finextra’s Financial Cloud Summit and to register for the event, click here.