A recent survey from Oracle, Accenture, and others predicts the imminent and widespread adoption of cloud solutions by financial services firms!? Well, better late the never…  As usual, large organizations like those conducting the survey are the last to jump on the “trend” bandwagon while small organizations have already gone “all in” on the cloud. The truth of the matter is that the cloud is already a mature and widely adopted technology delivery platform within the financial industry. In fact, financial firms that are not using cloud solutions currently are at a distinct disadvantage as compared with their peers and this will only become more pronounced as time goes by.

While the cloud is essential for investment management firms to contain technology and operational costs, successfully manage growth, and demonstrate disaster recovery and sound business continuity planning practices to institutional investors, it is really only one part of the technology equation.  The next trend within our space will be investment managers harnessing the power of big data technology to differentiate themselves from their competitors.  As usual, small and nimble companies will lead the way and the successful money managers that anticipate the trend and go “all in” (much like picking their next investment) will be ahead of the game like they were with the cloud.