THETRADETECH DA I LY
THE OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER OF TRADETECH 2018
Amazon Web Services and other cloud providers are fast becoming a critical part of
the financial world. But how is this impacting the traditional providers?
J
eff Bezos is the founder of Amazon and
one of the world’s richest CEOs, but
did you know that he once worked in the
financial industry? When you think about it,
it makes sense considering Amazon initially
started up as an online custodian and deposi-
tory for books.
But yes, prior to starting up one of the
world’s largest companies, Bezos worked at
Bankers Trust, before it was taken over by
Deutsche Bank in 1999. Joining as a product
manager, he moved up to become a vice pres-
ident within its technology unit. However,
according to one report, Bezos got “bored”
with the company and joined the then two-
year old hedge fund D.E. Shaw at the age of
26, where he was tasked with researching
new business opportunities at the height of
the dotcom bubble.
It was here that his vision of Amazon was
born, and in 1994 the company was found-
ed. Fast forward 20 years, and the original
vision of Amazon has greatly evolved from
page-turners. It has been at the forefront of
technological advancements in pretty much
every industry. In 2010, the cloud was an
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THETRADETECH DAILY
early phenomenon with limited adoption by
a handful of organisations. These companies
included Amazon Web Services (AWS), Mic-
rosoft Azure and Salesforce.com.
Now AWS has ballooned into a $12 billion
business and has more market share than its
closest competitors Azure and Google com-
bined, according to Synergy Research Group
Where AWS has excelled, is its move
into the financial services sector. Its cloud
computing has massively lowered barriers
to entry for financial start-ups, and for those
companies that want to take on the banks.
They can use the tech giant’s cloud to quickly
set up systems. Particularly with the buy-side,
AWS has grown its client base significantly.
“The AWS trend has become a major one,
where organisations want to tap it for its
on-demand cloud technology services. It
first started with some of the smaller-sized
firms, but we have signed on some asset
managers that want everything to be put onto
AWS,” says Gurvinder Singh, CEO of Indus
Valley Partners. “There has been a big shift
in attitudes towards AWS on the buy-side, as
it allows scale and provides easy set-ups for
their CTOs.”
However, the next question when looking at
AWS’s remarkable growth is will it lead to a
greater role in financial services where it will
compete with those providers?
Stepping on toes
AWS has made some significant strides in
some parts of the financial services and capi-
tal markets sector. Its lengthy clients include
UK insurer Aviva, US insurer Liberty Mutual
Insurance, data provider Thomson Reuters,
and DBS Bank, to name a few.
For its capital markets customers, which
also include Nasdaq and the London Stock
Exchange, its focus has been on providing
analytics applications, allowing scalability
and reducing processing times.
New rules and regulations over reporting
and risk calculation are also playing into
AWS favour, where it sees an opportunity to
expand its services.
“We see particular interest in risk-related
workloads including actuarial calculations
and Comprehensive Capital Analysis to
Review (CCAR), Fundamental Review of