Cloud computing is making a lot of advances across several different sectors of business. Industry, IT, and several others are discovering the value inherent in having access to some services where the infrastructure for same isn't necessarily on site. Perhaps one unexpected source of cloud computing gain, however, comes from the financial sector, where banks are beginning to discover benefit in not maintaining infrastructure on some systems.

The growth of two critical features, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS (News - Alert)), is driving a lot of organizations to look at different ways to offer up the products and services normally provided for internal use. Small and medium-sized firms are often quick to pounce on the benefits associated with IaaS and SaaS, and banks -- themselves often small and medium-sized firms--are rapidly discovering those benefits as well.

Tom Secunda, a founding partner, vice chairman and global head of financial products and services at Bloomberg (News - Alert) LP, provided some remarks to underscore the motives behind the changes. "In the finance industry, people are really starting to worry about costs and being efficient. In today's world, efficiency is outweighing growth." He further elaborated by saying "If you are a small [firm], or medium, wow, what a level of service you can get. And because the outsourcers do this across many customers, you can get the services much cheaper than you can do by yourself."

But even in the case of larger firms on the scale, many are discovering a new kind of value associated with not building technology solutions for use in house. It used to be that this was the only way to get a problem answered; "if you want the job done right, do it yourself," seemed to be the order of the day, and indeed, this produced extremely well-tailored solutions that provided just what was needed. But as costs increased, and more cloud-based options became available, the expense of developing in house began to seriously outweigh the benefits received, especially as cloud-based options improved as well.

IT budgets are shrinking in the face of a sluggish economy, and as such, more chief information officers are willing to move to cloud providers, and cloud providers are stepping up offerings in the face of increasing competition on all sides. Pershing, for example, offers the NetX360 system, specifically geared for investment professionals. NetX360 runs mostly on a cloud-based environment, proving that many will make the move to the cloud if what's offered on the cloud is worthwhile.

Indeed, for an increasing number of IT professionals, the issue of going with what works is driving a lot of movement to cloud-based services. Subcontracting out a lot of that infrastructure is proving to be a great money-saving measure, and it's reducing the amount that needs to be kept in house. Naturally, not everything can be outsourced, but for those things that can be, more and more firms are looking to make that particular jump, and banks are no exception here.

When cloud-based providers can offer products and services that provide the necessary functions for businesses of any stripe, including banks, it's not surprising to see firms make moves in that direction. Therefore it's a smart idea to look for this movement to continue as more banks discover the value in turning away from their own development, and turning to what the cloud has already produced.