In the last weeks, I enjoyed exciting discussions with technology innovators from Wolfram, NVIDIA and Xenomorph. This motivated me to I repeated part of the me talking to myself in the future play. About cloud computing in quantitative finance.
We expected web browsers to become little powerful operation systems for cloud-based computing and yes, first implementations of cloud-based operating systems are around. Like Google's Chrome OS implemented on the Cr-48 laptop.
Steven Levy wrote in Wired, May-11 - minimal local storage, no discernible file system, no print drivers and no client applications to install. Google has tossed the concept of local content, moved everything to the cloud, and replaced the desktop with a browser.
But this sounds fantastic? Booting may take seconds, updates come automatically, including for applications, all running on the web for the widest access.
Hold on, what about security, downtime, cost dependence, ... ? That is fine for document creation, audio and video streaming, but we are talking about serving core business processes, where assurance is needed that data in the clouds will enjoy the same protections as on the local servers and desktops and number crunching will run-around-the-clock. The paradigm is right, but the day isn't here.
But banks can adopt the technologies and build their intra-clouds. The virtualization technologies and associated tools are here. They should partner with software vendors whose software and services support intra-cloud services integrating scalable computing muscles for acceleration.
Actually we have a customer who does intra-cloud valuation and risk management: a large, fast growing private bank running our UnRisk FACTORY in a virtualized server farm at the headquarter, serving subsidiaries world-wide over the web - with a secure data, roles and user management.
