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Cloud computing has become crucial for most enterprises, but round-the-clock management of cloud infrastructure, platforms, data security, and integration can be challenging. This is especially true in highly regulated industries like financial services. That’s where managed cloud services come in.
A managed cloud provider will deliver tailored bundles of public or private managed cloud software, infrastructure, and tools. These resources are proactively monitored, optimised and safeguarded by cloud experts.
Instead of your technology teams ensuring servers are scaling elastically to demands, predicting capacity needs, and staying continually up-to-date on information security — you get all that and more from cloud-managed service providers dedicated to your industry.
With managed cloud services, you can realise innovation ambitions while controlling complexity. Let’s explore more on what is managed cloud and evaluate how outsourcing cloud management can benefit technology teams.
What Does Managed Cloud Mean?
Managed cloud services refer to cloud computing services where a third-party provider handles partial or complete management of cloud environments. So, rather than needing expertise in managing applications, data, infrastructure, and platform services in the cloud, the managed service provider will take care of those responsibilities. This allows you to focus on your core competencies without worrying about trying to manage in-house.
Below, we’ll look at how managed cloud services work:
Managed Service Providers Handle the Heavy Lifting
The core premise of managed cloud infrastructure services is transferring responsibility for architecting, deploying, running and securing cloud environments to a specialised provider. Businesses rely on the provider’s expertise instead of needing extensive in-house cloud DevOps, data engineering and security skills.
Common solutions that a managed cloud service might offer include:
- Provisioning and ongoing configuration of infrastructure like physical servers, managed cloud storage, networking
- Deployment of platforms like databases, data analytics tools and containers
- Integration and customisation of SaaS applications
- Ongoing system monitoring, optimisation and support
- Taking strict security measures like encryption, access controls and vulnerability testing
- Business continuity services like data backups and disaster recovery
A cloud services provider essentially becomes your dedicated cloud management team. This frees up your IT staff to focus on developing applications and deriving business value rather than cloud administration.
Tailored Solutions Aligned to Business Needs
A managed cloud services provider will work closely with clients to analyse use cases, required integrations, security risks and compliance requirements. This leads to designing a purpose-built cloud environment using optimal tools and configurations.
Additionally, cloud-managed services can be adapted as business needs evolve. A managed cloud provider has the ability to scale, optimise and reconfigure cloud environments in alignment with changing business initiatives. This can be achieved without needing to change your own infrastructure or data engineering teams.
For example, if new regulations require financial trade data or customer information to be stored in partitions isolated from other data, the provider of your managed cloud can architect the properly segmented cloud resources to become compliance-ready. This can save businesses countless hours trying to re-engineer existing systems themselves.
Admin Access, Controls & Responsibilities Vary
Different managed cloud services have different models for control access. Some grant clients complete control access to the management portal and monitoring tools to oversee configurations, costs and activity.
However, limited visibility or controls may be provided in other cases for heightened security. Depending on your preferences, the degree of administrative access, guardrails on modifications, and division of specific responsibilities can be negotiated with a managed cloud service provider.
Applications of Managed Cloud
Managed cloud services offer value for organisations in nearly every industry. Some key applications of managed cloud services by financial services:
Financial Services
Financial institutions might use managed cloud services for core bank operating systems, trading platforms, risk modelling, payment processing, and regulatory compliance. Most managed cloud service providers ensure ultra-low latency, high availability and network security for transaction processing needs. Additionally, specialised analytics tools help companies uncover customer insights and predictive signals in financial data.
Types of Managed Cloud Solutions
The managed cloud services market encompasses diverse offerings to suit different needs around control, security, scalability and capabilities. Common types of managed cloud computing services include private clouds, public clouds, proximity clouds, exchange-oriented clouds, and even hybrid clouds, which blend both public and private clouds.
Let’s explore key distinctions, benefits and applicable use cases across each cloud-based solution:
Private Cloud
Private clouds have a managed cloud environment dedicated solely to one organisation, hosted either on-premises or externally via a cloud provider. They generally offer enhanced customisation, security and control compared to public clouds because companies don’t use shared resources.
Proximity Cloud®
A Proximity Cloud® refers to distributed cloud infrastructure and services hosted closer to end users, with an emphasis on minimising latency. Proximity Cloud® can be configured as either public or private cloud environments. It is a useful cloud solution for businesses that need quick local access.
This is a trademarked solution only offered by Beeks.
Exchange Cloud®
Also called financial cloud or trading cloud refers to cloud resources and platforms specifically designed to power electronic trading workloads. This includes stock exchanges, investment banks, hedge funds, and other capital markets organisations with demanding performance requirements around transaction processing.
A cloud service that offers an exchange cloud will often emphasise achieving microsecond latency, which is critical for electronic trading.
Exchange Cloud® and Financial Cloud® are trademarked by Beeks.
Public Cloud
Public clouds refer to shared computing resources, tools and services hosted by third-party providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and others. Unlike private clouds, public clouds are accessible to multiple organisations rather than dedicated to a single tenant.
Key benefits of a public managed cloud platform include rapid capacity expansion, cost savings, and pay-as-you-go services for innovation projects.
Hybrid Cloud
Managed hybrid clouds combine a company’s private cloud with large public cloud data centres . Specialist cloud service providers manage how these work together. Organisations get the control and security of private clouds with the flexibility of public clouds.
In essence, the hybrid model can be described as a multi-cloud environment that allows businesses to swiftly deploy additional resources to support growth and new innovations when needed most.
Benefits of Managed Cloud Services for Finance or Capital Markets
The responsiveness, resilience, and innovation of cloud computing have become vital for modern financial institutions. However, designing and operating cloud infrastructure to meet rigorous security, compliance and performance demands in financial services remains an immense challenge. This is where managed cloud services tailored for capital markets shine.
Let’s explore the benefits of managed services for the financial sector and capital markets.
Ultra-Fast Performance
Agile managed cloud platforms in finance fine-tune computing specifically to enable microsecond speeds for trading systems. This level of responsiveness with minimal delays is vital for exchanges and electronic trading firms.
Financial clouds also interconnect major global market data centres with optimised routing. This lets high-frequency algorithmic trades execute quickly across regions to seize short-term opportunities.
Robust Security & Controls
Managed cloud services closely align with cybersecurity best practices, along with compliance principles around financial data handling and security. This includes encryption, strict access policies, and active threat monitoring throughout the managed infrastructure.
Guardrails and visibility limits also allow organisations offering financial services to safely leverage the technologies of public clouds while preventing the leak of confidential data.
Regulatory Compliance
Managed cloud servers are tailored to embed compliance requirements around financial transaction data management, trade recording or reporting, and other regulatory needs applicable to capital markets.
This reduces the risks of violations and non-compliance fines across sectors, including banking, insurance, and trading firms.
Reliability & Business Continuity
A high-availability managed cloud service provides maximum uptime for trading infrastructure, core banking systems, and other financial platforms that have time-sensitive operations.
Additionally, managed cloud IT services build in redundancy mechanisms, failover safeguards, and backup tools to limit disruptions across geographic regions. This ensures resilient business continuity even in the event of localised outages.
Flexibility & Agility
Cloud adoption allows financial services companies to swiftly scale technical resources up and down to match fluctuating business demands without disruption. You can rapidly spin up new trading tools, analytics environments and banking capabilities on demand.
This agility accelerates new product rollouts and the adoption of emerging technologies.
Cost Savings
The pay-as-you-go models of managed cloud minimise the overprovisioning of unused resources, which reduces waste. Right-sized deployments are created to optimally fulfil current workload infrastructure needs responsively.
Multiple providers also pass through aggregated bulk discounts from leading public cloud partners, creating further cost efficiency. Additionally, businesses will avoid large capital investments to refresh hardware and private data centres.
Operational Efficiency
An unmanaged cloud is time-consuming and requires a lot of in-house resources. A managed cloud consolidates many complicated IT jobs — security upkeep, fixes, and future capacity planning — into one provider. This spreads out costs and raises productivity.
Most importantly, internal IT staff spend less time on general maintenance duties. They redirect these saved hours toward advanced projects that only your organisation excels at.
Choose Beeks’ Managed Cloud Solution
Beeks has been a managed cloud service provider for Capital Markets and financial services since 2011. We are recognised leaders in providing purpose-built, low latency cloud computing, analytics, and connectivity solutions exclusively for global capital markets and financial services firms.
Are you a financial enterprise looking for managed cloud services? Simply curious about what is managed cloud? Enquire about our cloud services and managed cloud hosting at sales@beeksgroup.com.
