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The IT cloud 云计算 Silver linings 一线曙光 Banks big and small are embracing cloud computing 大大小小的银行都在转投云计算 Jul 20th 2013 |From the print edition  1 “I’VE only got one IT guy,” says Segun Akintemi, the chief executive of Renaissance Credit, a Nigerian moneylender that opened for business in October 2012 and signed up about 3,000 customers in its first six months. “Whenever I walk past his desk he is surfing the web.” That the firm has just one bored computer specialist is not a sign of backwardness. On the contrary, Renaissance Credit is ahead of its time when it comes to technology. Its information processing takes place in the “cloud”, the term for software and services delivered over the internet. 晋新信贷（Renaissance Credit）2012年10月才在尼日利亚投入运营，头六个月就发展了3000名左右的签约客户。这家信贷机构的总经理Segun Akintemi曾说：“我只有一名IT雇员。每次我从他的工位旁边经过，都看到他在浏览网页”。只拥有一名无所事事的计算机专业人员并不意味着这个企业 很落后。恰恰相反，晋新信贷在技术方面说得上是领先于时代的。这家企业的信息处理在“云”里完成，“云”是指通过互联网提供软件和服务。 2 The emergence of cloud-based banking promises to affect banks big and small. Banks are expected to spend almost $180 billion on IT this year, according to Celent, a consultancy. For the moment cloud-based services make up a tiny fraction of this amount, but by some estimates spending by financial-services firms on the cloud will total $26 billion in 2015. This increase should lower barriers to entry for newcomers, which can rent modern IT infrastructure at monthly fees of less than $10,000 rather than having to invest tens of millions of dollars upfront to build their own secure data centres. And it should also enable big banks to become much more cost-efficient. 基于“云”的银行服务的兴起将影响大大小小的银行。根据咨询公司Celent估算，今年所有银行花 在信息化上的支出将近1800亿美元，其中基于“云”的服务只占其中的很小一部分。然而有人预测到2015年金融企业在“云”上开销将达260亿美元。这 种变化将降低金融市场的准入门槛，让新进入者可以以每月不到10，000美元的成本租用现代化的信息基础设施，省得要花好几千万美元去建一个自己的安全数 据中心。大银行也可以通过这种方式提高成本效益。 3 Small firms, without legacy computer systems to constrain them, are the fastest movers. Renaissance Credit’s embrace of cloud computing has been almost total. Its employees type documents, run spreadsheets and read e-mails in the cloud. Its banking software, which keeps track of clients, payments and loans, runs on a cloud-computing platform using off-the-shelf banking software provided by Temenos, a specialist provider. 由于没有老旧计算机系统的约束，小型企业的迁移动作最快。晋新信贷几乎是全面投向了云计算：其雇员在“云”中输入文档，运行电子表格和阅读电子邮件。该银行用于跟踪客户、支付和贷款的业务系统软件由专业软件提供商Temenos提供，运行在“云”计算平台上，打开就能用①。 4 By using standard software and running it in existing data centres, the firm has dramatically cut its start-up costs; it pays a fee based on the number of clients it has and can simply keep scaling up as it grows. It has also been able to get off the ground quickly. It took just two months to go into operation after signing contracts with its suppliers. Despite outsourcing all its IT activities, it still needs at least one geek on hand. His main job, Mr Akintemi says, is to take new computers out of their boxes and plug them in. 通过使用运行在现有的数据中心之上的标准化软件，该银行大幅削减了启动成本。相关费用按照用户数收 取，系统规模能够随着业务成长而轻松扩展。晋新信贷的启动速度非常快，和供应商签订合同之后只过了两个月，它就开始投入运营了。虽然它把所有的信息技术工 作全部外包了，但还是聘请了一位技术高手。Akintemi说，他的主要工作就是把计算机从盒子里拿出来并接好线。 5 Big banks have generally migrated less of their activity to the cloud than newer, smaller ones. This is partly because of legacy systems, partly because of regulatory concerns about data security and privacy. But the pressure to reduce spending is likely to force the pace of change. Simon Samuels of Barclays notes that whereas revenues at big European banks rose by 18% a year on average before the financial crisis, they have shrunk in recent years. One way of improving cost-income ratios is to lob activities into the cloud. 和才成立不久的小型银行相比，大银行已迁移到“云”中的业务通常比较少。一方面原因是老的系统还在 使用，另一方面对数据安全和保密还有管理上的顾虑。然而削减开支的压力估计最终会加快他们的迁移步伐。巴克莱银行的西蒙·塞缪尔斯指出，欧洲银行在经济危 机之前营业收入平均每年增长18%，而这几年以来收入一直在下降。要改善成本收入比率，把业务迁移到“云”是一种选择。 6 Banks in the rich world have started outsourcing the processing of data that does not involve sensitive client information but does require massive computing resources, says Colin Kerr, who heads Microsoft’s banking business. These include tasks such as “Monte Carlo” simulations in which banks run calculations millions of times over, each with slightly different variables, to assess what may happen to the prices of their assets or derivatives if markets move suddenly. 微软公司的银行业务部门领导科林·克尔说，富裕国家银行已经开始把不包含客户敏感信息而又需要海量 计算资源的数据处理任务外包出去，其中包括“蒙特卡罗”模拟。这种模拟用于评估如果市场突然出现变化，对银行所持有的资产或金融衍生品的价格会有什么样的 影响。同一模拟银行可能会重复运算上百万次，每次只会有几个变量有所不同。 7 Bankinter, a tech-savvy Spanish bank, runs its complex credit-risk simulations on Amazon’s cloud platform. Calculations that previously took more than 20 hours to complete on the bank’s own systems are now done in 20 minutes. Big banks are also renting resources in the cloud when they need safe test environments in which they can mirror their own computer systems and then make changes or updates without the risk of crashing the entire bank. 技术领先的西班牙银行Bankinter目前在亚马逊的云计算平台上进行复杂的信用风险模拟分析。 以前用银行自有系统来计算的时候，这个分析需要20个小时才能完成，而使用亚马逊平台20分钟之内就可以得出结果了。大型银行在需要安全测试环境的时候， 也会租用“云”资源。这样他们可以系统的镜像建立到“云”里面，在镜像上做修改或升级，以避免让整个银行系统崩溃的风险。 8 Many banks are reconfiguring their own computer systems into private clouds, a hybrid step in which they have sole use of a data centre (these are shared in the “public cloud”), but derive some efficiencies from using the software and systems that run public clouds. Bank SinoPac, a Taiwanese lender, will cut its IT infrastructure costs by almost half by moving from a mainframe computer to a private cloud. Barclays and Deutsche Bank have moved some functions into private clouds. 许多银行正在重新配置自有的计算机系统，将之改造为私有云。这是一个混合式的阶段，银行在独占的数 据中心上（共享的数据中心属于“公共云”）运行和公有云一致的软件和系统以获得效率上的一定提升。台湾永丰商业银行是一家贷款机构，它通过把业务系统从大 型机上迁移到私有云中，差不多能减少一半的信息技术基础设施成本。巴克莱银行和德意志银行已经将某些业务迁移到了私有云中。 9 There are, however, impediments to the wide adoption of cloud computing. One is the worry over security and data protection. For small banks with limited resources, the large data centres provided by firms such as Amazon or Microsoft are probably safer and more reliable than any that they could build themselves. Large banks, many of which have already built their own bomb-proof secure data centres, are reluctant to hand over client data to outsiders. The theft of data or a major systems failure by a bank with its operations in the cloud would doubtless prompt regulators to slam on the brakes, too. 然而，云计算的普及仍存在障碍。其中一点是银行对数据能否妥善、安全地保存抱有疑虑。对于资源有限 的小银行来说，亚马逊或微软提供的大型数据中心可能比自己投钱去建的还要安全可靠。而许多大银行已经建造了连炮击都不怕的安全数据中心，所以不愿把客户数 据外移。如果银行把业务迁移到“云”中之后出现数据失窃或重大系统故障，那么监管者无疑将会对此叫停。 You cannot be cirrus 要动真格？② 10 Some countries insist that client data are not allowed to leave their national borders, which could force cloud-computing firms to build small data centres in many markets, reducing the scope for cost savings. Many regulators also want to be able to inspect and, in the words of one IT specialist, “put their hand on” the computer server holding client data. Providers of cloud services can be reluctant to allow inspections because they try to keep the locations of server farms secret. “The more you open up your data centres, the more vulnerable you make them,” says one. 一些国家严格禁止把银行客户数据存储在国外，云计算公司不得不在这些国家里建设规模较小的数据中 心，这样一来能够利用规模效应节约下来的成本也就少了。许多监管机构还要求能够对数据进行检查，用信息专业人士的话来说，这叫“把手放在”保存客户数据的 计算机服务器上。云服务提供商可能并不想让人来检查，他们不希望公司以外的人员知道服务器所在的物理位置。有个人是这样说的“数据中心越开放，越容易受到 攻击。” 11 These problems may change the pace but not the direction of travel. The cost advantages of cloud computing mean that banking services are likely to move inexorably into the ether. If so, the staff in banks’ IT departments will have more time to brush up their solitaire skills. 诸如此类的问题可能会影响云计算的普及速度，但不会改变普及的大趋势。云计算的成本优势意味着银行服务融入“云”的过程可能将不以人的意志为转移。如果真是这样，银行信息部门的员工将会有更多的时间去刷新他们的“单人纸牌”游戏记录了。 译者注： ① 在云技术的SaaS（软件即服务）模式下，软件已经在“云”中安装配置好，打开就能用。 ② 根据Jess大拿的鉴定You cannot be cirrus其实就是You cannot be serious。Cirrus最常见的含义是“卷云”。 |
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