The latest Tabb Group analysis hypothesizes on how institutions can reduce their technology footprint to “zero infrastructure.”
While I agree with Robert Iati’s analysis, I would take it a step further and argue that on the buy side, firms have already achieved zero technology infrastructures. I witnessed this first hand when visiting a new client of ours (not surprisingly, a Cloud client). Literally, they had no technology infrastructure within their offices. All of their key vendors were Cloud-based. Everything from their core investment management system (us), to their email server and even their phone system (VOIP) was in a cloud.
Even as we are one year or so into our iPM Cloud offering, I am continually amazed by the rapid progression of investment managers to use Cloud solutions for everything that they have that is mission-critical. When taking a closer look, however, it is really no surprise. The investment manager’s job is to manage investments, not technology. When firms understand that valuable operations & IT resources can be re-deployed towards tasks which differentiate the firm or create a competitive advantage, moving to the Cloud is a foregone conclusion.
