The Importance Of Speed, Agility And Security In Banking.

Hi Holland, Please give our readers a quick intro into what you do and your areas of specialism.

Cyxtera is a global leader in data centre colocation and interconnection services. Our global platform of 62 highly-connected data centres brings together more than 2,300 customers and 600 networks in 29 global markets on four continents. We've built our platform for today's distributed, hybrid I.T., providing enterprises a secure, highly-connected global footprint for mission-critical applications and systems.

Who do you work with in the banking and financial services space?

We have over 24 years’ experience in serving the banking and financial services sector. Cyxtera has strong, long-standing relationships with leading financial institutions. We service over 200 different financial customers and 80% of the top 10 global banks.

Speed, agility and security have always been important in banking, and in recent years there has been a heightened focus on digital transformation. How do you support your financial services customers with those requirements?

Each customer of ours is unique and has specific requirements that we address. At Cyxtera we create tailored solutions to align with their digital transformation strategy. Here’s how we support our customers with requirements that include speed, agility and security.

Speed:

Milliseconds of latency may cost financial firms millions over the course of a year. Cyxtera’s carrier- and cloud-neutral, densely connected global data centre footprint and partner ecosystem, allows us to deliver reliable low latency to our fintech customers with our bespoke interconnection services. Our customers benefit from:

• Faster time to market with connections to service providers and financial exchanges

• Reduced network cost versus in-house data centre by avoiding local loop charges

• Reduce complexity with a consistent interconnection model across all Cyxtera data centres globally

Scalability and security:

Modern enterprises require flexibility and agility to support the growth of their business. Although cloud environments have been an attractive choice when it comes to scalability, fintech enterprises are cautious of the security element that this entails.

Cyxtera’s Enterprise Bare Metal platform is an attractive alternative to public cloud environments, providing the financial and operational flexibility of cloud with the control, performance and security of enterprise-grade dedicated infrastructure.

With Cyxtera’s Enterprise Bare Metal platform, we help our customers to quickly deploy enterprise-class infrastructure to support their applications and private clouds without the burden of capital expenditures, lengthy implementation cycles, depreciating assets, or adding to local staff. Our customers have seen substantial increases in cost optimisation and better alignment with business outcomes by leveraging the flexibility, scalability, and control provided by our on-demand platform.

Does the coronavirus pandemic shine a brighter light on the importance of reliable infrastructure?

The 2020 Gartner CIO Survey found that only 13% of IT leaders in the financial services industry were primarily focused on running a cost-efficient IT environment, while the vast majority (77%) were striving to deliver increased value from IT.

This survey was conducted before the coronavirus-led crisis, but those aspirations will become even more relevant in a post-COVID-19 world. Digitalisation of core business processes, such as lending in banking or claims management in insurance, will become an even higher business priority for financial services CIOs. That’s because they want to increase the operational efficiency of their companies during the next two years.

The survey found that 61% of the financial services respondents believe that digitizing core business processes will help them with this efficiency goal, while 48% will rely on business process automation to reduce labour costs. And 42% favour the adoption of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence.

Therefore, having a reliable infrastructure that can support digital transformation is critical.

As we move out of the peak of the pandemic and start to adapt to the ‘new normal’ it is reasonable to expect that companies will take a more agile approach to hybrid home/office working? How can organisations like Cyxtera help?

Many of our financial services customers are coming to us with new requirements during this time of crisis, such as enabling staff to work from home with VDI or adding additional network bandwidth rapidly.

We have developed a portfolio of services to support our customers to continue operate and scale. Here’s a quick overview of our services:

VDI Rapid Deployment – That allows you to extend or deploy virtual desktop environments to support remote workforces through Cyxtera’s Enterprise Bare Metal platform.

IP Connect – With this service, you can get quick and easy on-demand access to stable and secure instances of blended bandwidth to compliment network diversity strategies.

Cyxtera Marketplace - The Cyxtera Marketplace has a storefront for each of our ecosystem providers that allows you to find everything you need to architect or optimise your hybrid environments and – and as business requirements evolve – easily evaluate options that can scale your business fast.

Cyxtera Enterprise Bare Metal - you can quickly deploy enterprise-class infrastructure to support your applications and private clouds without the burden of capital expenditures, lengthy implementation cycles, depreciating assets, or adding to local staff.

We’ve seen that AI and Deep Learning, accelerated by GPU architectures, are changing the way financial institutions deliver their services. How Cyxtera can support the AI strategy of the financial institutions?

Financial institutions have shifted their focus and we’ve seen many of our customers working on improving their digital processes through AI to create more positive consumer experiences and lower operational costs.

Cyxtera have teamed up with NVIDIA to create a product offering that can support their AI workloads in the following areas:

Computational Risk:



AI platforms accelerate the creation of models that help financial experts:

• Forecast Business Performance

• Assess Trends

• Identify Risks

Fraud Detection:



Deep learning (DL) dramatically reduces false positives in transactional fraud.

• AI neural networks can quickly identify irregularities in transactional activity patterns.

Trade:



• Faster processing results in reliable trade execution and increased revenue

• GPU-powered acceleration to decrease latency, giving trading platforms a competitive edge

Conversational AI:

• Real-time AI Conversations

• Natural Language Processing

• Personalised Customer Experience

• Increased Engagement

Holland Barry, Field CTO, Cyxtera recently delivered an online presentation during FinTech Connect’s digital transformation event, DX Connect titled “Why your infrastructure is more important than ever during a time of crisis”.

You can access the complimentary webinar here on-demand.