Presence of cloud computing growing in financial institutions

BEIJING - The use of cloud computing technology in China's financial institutions is growing, according to a recent report.

Nearly 90 percent of Chinese financial institutions have used or plan to use cloud computing technology, according to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT).

The financial institutions in the report include large, middle and small-sized joint-equity commercial banks, insurance companies and securities institutions. Among them, 41.18 percent have already used cloud computing technology and 46.8 percent plan to use it.

As for the reasons they have adopted cloud computing, 67.81 percent of financial institutions said "time-saving," and 62.56 percent chose "cost-saving." Other reasons include "better consumer services" and "automatic detection of system malfunction."

Up to 69.57 percent of all financial institutions chose to use private cloud computing, and only 11.18 percent preferred public cloud services. The report said this shows financial institutions have made security the top priority.

"In recent years, cloud computing technology in China has been developing very fast and is gradually entering traditional sectors such as finance," said Li Wei, a cloud computing expert with the CAICT.

Meanwhile, the challenges brought by the Internet Plus era are also driving financial institutions to upgrade their information levels by using cloud computing, Li said.