Banks take early steps to computer clouds

A group of banks is co-operating on a big cloud computing initiative, which they claim will give them the potential to reduce the implementation time of new systems from months to minutes. Clive Davidson reports

The provision of financial services is increasingly a technology arms race, with derivatives trading and risk management among the most demanding from a systems perspective. But supporting the huge computational demands and constant innovation required in today’s markets is becoming more than many internal IT departments can handle. In response, a growing number of banks are beginning to look beyond their own firewalls to technology available in computing clouds.

Cloud computing is the provision