How a Large Bank Redesigned its Cloud and Integrated It With Its Overall Business Plan

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There are some things that telecom and banking have in common that you might not have thought of.

Many analysts have predicted that the two areas of technology will eventually merge, but there is one more way in which they are alike. They both have strong core competencies and large user bases, but they still use a lot of old IT.

As well as the differences, Himanshu Jha points out the things that are the same.

He is in a good place to do that. He spent ten years in the first group, working at Verizon and BT and “basically building a new stack.”

The last ten years have been spent in the second group. Jha was most recently the cloud CTIO (chief technology and information officer) at TSB. Before that, he worked at Barclays, where as part of a new data team, he helped co-author the bank’s data strategy to support its overall business strategy. One important thing was that he could now build a cloud instead of just using it, which was part of his old job.

What does Jha think about the two areas where he knows a lot?

“Telecom is more complicated than banking,” he says.

“Why? Because they run a big part of the network and set it up. The customer experience is really based on how well the network works, which is a big part of their business. A lot of legacy, a lot of mainframe, and a lot of the need to move from batch mode to real-time are things that are pretty much the same.”

“However, what a bank does is very sensitive, and when you use old technology for that, it might hurt you more,” says Jha. “That means banks need to come up with new ideas a lot more than telcos do. I’d like to think that banks kind of lead the way in using technology, with more pressure to come up with new ideas.

The person who was going to be the cloud CTIO had to find a balance between leadership, strategy, and technology.

Like at Barclays, though, it’s important not to forget how important it is to combine the cloud strategy with the business strategy in order to improve service, make it more personal, use analytics on the cloud, and cut costs and improve efficiency.

In his writing, Jha talks about how all three fields are connected.

He says, “There’s no point in being a leader if you can’t come up with a plan and carry it out.” “And the strategy needs to fit the situation.” We need to work on our cloud strategy at the same time because it’s part of our overall technology strategy to support our business strategy. After all, there’s no point in spending money on something that doesn’t support our business strategy.

“If we take a closer look, data has always been there, the cloud has arrived, and AI is still here.” When you put these three things together, they work really well, says Jha.

“That’s because you can’t really look at a lot of data if you don’t have a cloud service, and data is also important for AI.” Which means that if you want to take advantage of the three waves, you need to have a strong cloud offering.

In what ways did this change happen at TSB?

Jha says it was mostly about two things: making new enterprise cloud platforms and services and keeping old ones running; and updating digital, data, and business apps and infrastructure by redesigning and replatforming them to be cloud native in different ways. It was important to know which blocks should be rebuilt in AWS and which should be rebuilt in Azure. With a few exceptions, the business applications that deal with customers would be on AWS, while the applications that deal with coworkers would be on Azure.

This one had a virtual desktop on it, which Jha says is one of Azure’s strong points.

It was an example of replatforming, which means moving a set of microservices from on-premises to IBM Cloud. “The code of these microservices didn’t really change,” says Jha. “Redeployment on a different cloud platform made it possible for better runtime and cost management.”Azure Synapse Analytics was also used for the part that focused on the users.

You can say that a lot of the choice comes down to how good or bad AWS or Azure is, but you also need to know enough about the technology to be able to use it for your solution and situation, says Jha.

But how do you choose between replatforming and re architecting?

“Go for it,” says Jha, “if you have time and if your on-premise applications really need to be rewired.” “But I think you could get the OPEX value from the cloud platform right away by replatforming. That way, you wouldn’t have to patch and upgrade as often.”

It can be a bit of a minefield, which makes sense, and there are holes that organisations can easily fall through. Jha says that the two main problems are education and cost.

He says, “I don’t think education is consistent.” “Digital transformation can’t happen if business owners don’t talk the same language and work at the same speed. And I’m not just talking about tech—I mean tech isn’t always consistent.”

There is more to it than just technical knowledge. As Jha puts it, it’s “that consistent understanding of where we are driving, how we are getting there, which technologies are in use, and how it will really affect the outcome.”

Cost fits in naturally with this. When the C-suite sees the numbers, they will want the project to be finished as quickly as possible. But this can have costs that were not expected. “Let’s say you’re on the cloud,” Jha says.

“You have to plan for a bigger investment because you need more people with the most skills.” When you work on projects in the cloud, you need skills that are very different from the ones you have now.

“These shows are often pulled because they don’t live up to expectations,” Jha says. “A cloud infrastructure is useful when it is stable and all of your work is moved around as much as possible.” In other words, the denominator goes up, which is good for you. But not when there are Mickey Mouse edge use cases going on. That’s when clouds don’t make sense.

“It takes time to get the full cloud,” says Jha. “You need to include both the cost up front and the time it takes to do a run.” Some time will pass before the cloud applications are stable enough for you to move to on-premise infrastructure. These two costs—I saw it getting lost. The cost isn’t planned for in the budget.

To conclude the conversation, Jha made a quiet but important statement.

“I want people to learn that I hope they can be a little more real,” says Jha. We all know how she feels. “[They] put aside all the reports, promises, hype, and possibilities and do more thinking, teaching, working together, or work that sounds a lot less exciting. This is because they know that the vision will never come true until they get down to the nuts and bolts.”

“People get excited, but they won’t be truly excited until they put in double the effort and learn exactly how to make it work.”This article was originally published by Cloud Tech Media, referencing Himanshu Jha’s talks at the Cloud Transformation Conference on February 15th.

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