Kubernetes And The Sunny Outlook For Cloud Banking

Many financial institutions (FIs), including some of the world’s biggest, found out the hard way that core legacy banking systems were not immune from COVID’s unpredictable effects on network volumes and server workloads as the population moved life online, including banking.

A major takeaway from all of this has been the promise of cloud banking – its resilience and ability to scale, all built on open-source Kubernetes computing and its containerization technology.

“Cloud-based solutions are therefore becoming more attractive to the banking industry, especially given the potential of tools such as Kubernetes,” according to PYMNTS’ new Digital Banks and the Power of the Cloud Tracker®, done in collaboration with NuoDB.

“Kubernetes is an open-source orchestration solution originally designed by technology giant Google in 2014. It aims to offer more flexibility for firms deploying their services via cloud-based containers, which are essentially bundled applications stored on the cloud,” per the new Tracker.

“Kubernetes offers banks and companies frameworks they can use to more transparently — and more quickly — consolidate various applications running on their separate containers. FIs looking for flexibility and scalability in their robust online banking operations would thus be wise to examine the technology and its potential.”

Agility in all Things

“Agility in all things” is the new mission of FIs, and the adoption of cloud banking with Kubernetes computing capabilities opens new possibilities, from customer experience to account security.

A Kubernetes container management and orchestration platform lets FIs roll out new applications faster, quickly meeting client and customer demand.

That’s agility in action.

“Kubernetes also improves [the] user experience by ensuring applications are always available and responsive to customer demand. Kubernetes automatically restarts failed processes and dynamically scales processes to be able to keep up with demand. No longer do banks have to [expect] customers [to] complain about slow performance,” Ariff Kassam, chief technology officer at NuoDB, told PYMNTS.

Kassam explained that Kubernetes allows FIs to reduce costs while providing an “on-ramp to the cloud. Both are critical in the face of the ongoing pandemic. Since containers are smaller than virtual machines, banks can increase server utilization and reduce costs with Kubernetes,” he said. “Finally, Kubernetes provides a seamless experience, either on-premises or in any cloud. Kubernetes allows banks to easily migrate to the cloud.”

Cloud-Native Systems, Cloud Banking Breakthroughs

As the digital shift to cloud banking gains momentum, platforms incorporating Kubernetes and containerization technology will proliferate, tracking with consumer and B2B demand.

Tech transformation laggards are behind the eight-ball on this one, and must catch up.

“Recent research also suggests that … digital shifts could be permanent, as approximately 30 percent of individuals in one report stated that they would continue using online banking channels after the pandemic passed,” according to Digital Banks and the Power of the Cloud Tracker®. “This means FIs clinging to aging infrastructures could continue to face challenges unless they quickly adapt to the digital migration.”

It’s all pointing to the adoption of cloud banking and adjacent technologies as the industry moves forward out of pandemic depths, and banks and FIs begin viewing technology in a new light.

“Banks must think of the cloud not as a tool but as a system, which means they need to consider how it can be shaped to support multiple applications. One study found that 93 percent of companies had multi-cloud strategies, for example, but only 33 percent of the enterprises surveyed were using multi-cloud management solutions,” per the Tracker.

“This essentially means that cloud platforms are familiar to banks, yet FIs are unfamiliar with connecting the many disparate cloud solutions they use. It is here that the use of cloud-native systems and accompanying tools, such as Kubernetes, come into deeper play.”