Truphone (News - Alert) announced on Tuesday that it had opened an office in New York City in response to an increasing number of customers in the area. The Durham, NC-based company provides a mobile network that allows customers to avoid roaming charges as international calls are treated as local calls, thanks to special SIM chip technology. Its mobile recording technology is another major offering.

The likely driving forces behind Truphone’s new location are the heavy concentration of financial institutions in the area and the need for these businesses to comply with the Dodd-Frank Act (DFA). The mobile recording solution the company provides allows customers to comply with DFA requirements that all relevant calls and electronic communications are to be recorded and stored for a minimum of one year.

According to Truphone, what makes the company stand out is that its recording solution is network-based instead of device or software-based, thus avoiding performance glitches. The requirement of storing call content for a year means that servers will need volumes of capacity to store the data. This suggests that cloud technology will at least be considered, if not included as part of the solution.

To financial behemoths like Bank of America or Chase, DFA compliance is another cost of business that can be absorbed. For small and medium firms, the law poses challenges, especially if the customer base is growing. Adding 1,000 customers to a large financial institution would not amount to a blip on that company’s radar screen, but it could cause a SME to double or triple in size.

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The scalability of the cloud will be the likely antidote for many such small companies with large growth. The cloud provider would be able to adjust and allocate capacity as needed, with gradual cost increases. These smaller companies would also be exposed to fewer risks with a cloud provider than with their own IT department. Expertise in DFA compliance would be a huge selling point for the providers as well.

The biggest challenge will be trust, security and ensuring that the cloud providers can follow best practices. Legislators may also need to tweak regulations that did not previously address issues with cloud technology.

Using cloud technology with its recording solution is something that Truphone has already started doing with UK telecom company BT (News - Alert) in September. DFA compliance will drive more financial companies in the US to demand a similar solution.