The report, which gathered insights from cloud decision-makers from the UK and US’s largest financial institutions and is titled Cloud Busting: Dispelling the Myths Surrounding the Future of Cloud in Financial Services, shows that the adoption of multi-cloud strategies will rise dramatically. The proportion of companies using 4+ clouds is set to double, and those currently using 1 and 2 clouds will also be managing an increased number of cloud providers within five years.

Most notably though, those companies currently using 3 clouds predict a cut to around 2 as they become more secure in their strategy, meaning one of the ‘big 3’ providers - Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud - could be set to lose out as a result. While the big name players fight for market share, they should take into account that the strength of their name alone will not make a difference for FIs, which decide on their cloud solutions from ‘insight’ and ‘data’ led approaches, over ‘brand’ led. This means FIs are choosing cloud providers based on their performance, rather than their brand. This will give a boost to challenger clouds like Oracle, IBM, Alibaba and others, in that they can challenge the ‘big 3’ in FS through the suitability of their offerings rather than legacy reputations.

Despite the rise of cloud, the report also notes that the use of on-premise infrastructure is here to stay. 99% of financial services still use some form of on-premise compute, meaning hybrid cloud and on-premise solutions will play a vital role in the future of finance.

Gareth Williams, CEO of YellowDog, said:

“In an era of increasing cloud maturity it’s interesting to see financial services develop their cloud strategies as they discover what works best for them. Over the next five years, we’ll see most adopting hybrid cloud solutions. Due to this, financial services will need to find a way of optimising their cloud strategy and intelligently managing the relationship between their on-premise and cloud resources”

YellowDog predicts the use of multi-cloud could save institutions tens of millions every year through reliability. And with 86% of firms having lost money due to failed data processes in the last year - not to mention 88% saying a missed deadline has caused a significant negative impact - it is clear to see why the multi-cloud migration has begun.