A new survey reveals financial services firms are set to invest heavily in HPC in 2009, with virtualisation a key focus area.
The survey of senior IT executives at 35 leading financial services firms, carried out by Platform Computing, highlights that cost reduction (54 per cent) and meeting the increased risk management need (23 per cent) are the primary reasons for banks to invest in HPC solutions in 2009. This highlights how banks recognise the benefits of HPC to improve capacity/utilisation of existing assets and use of virtualisation, especially in the wake of the financial crisis. Interestingly, virtualisation is the 'watch-word' for banks in 2009 as it is considered the infrastructure priority by the majority of banks (54 per cent) in 2009 compared to HPC (17 per cent), cloud computing (14 per cent) and SOA (12 per cent).
With regards to cloud computing, the majority of respondents (51 per cent) said they didn't think that 2009 would be its year. Along with the 31 per cent that didn't know, the respondents cited 2010 as the year of cloud computing. What is preventing firms from adopting cloud computing is the fact it is at early stage adoption (29 per cent) and also because it is still an ill-defined term (29 per cent). Security (17 per cent) was then cited as the next major barrier for adoption, especially as banks look to external clouds, and lack of management buy-in (9 per cent).
