Cloud initiatives clearly do not come in “one size fits all”
packages. They vary widely in focus and complexity, from
basic migration projects to extreme cases involving the
strictest security and performance requirements of a global
financial services giant.
Mastercard completed a complicated project that illustrates
the challenges cloud implementations can pose and the
benefits they can offer. The company leveraged a hybrid
cloud approach to launch a groundbreaking global real-
time payment system with
lightning-fast
transaction
speeds.
How did Mastercard pull it off?
Is what Mastercard is doing
considered a bellwether for
where global 2000 industries
are going when it comes to
cloud use? And what is hap-
pening in the adoption of
cloud that puts a new focus on
such concerns as security, data
sovereignty and performance
issues?
Dana Gardner: What is happening with cloud adoption that
newly satisfies such major concerns as strict security, local-
ized data and top-rate performance? Robert, what’s allow-
ing for a new leading edge when it comes to the public
cloud’s use?
Robert Christiansen: A number of new use cases have
been made public. For the front runners, like Capital One
and some other organizations, they have taken core appli-
cations that would otherwise be considered sacred and are
moving them to cloud platforms. Those have become more
and more evident and visible. The Capital One CIO, Robert
Alexander, has been very vocal about that.
So now, others have followed suit. And the U.S. federal gov-
ernment regulators have been much more accepting
around the audit controls. We are seeing a lot more gover-
nance and automation happening as well. A number of the
WINTER 2019
So by default, folks like Paolo at Mastercard are considering
the new solutions that could give them a competitive edge.
We are just seeing a lot more acceptance of cloud models
over the last 18 months.
Gardner: Paolo, is increased adoption a matter of gaining
more confidence in cloud, or
are there proof points you
look for that open the gates
for more cloud adoption?
Mastercard leveraged
a hybrid cloud approach
to launch a ground-
breaking global real-time
payment system with
lightning-fast transac-
tion speeds.
Dana Gardner sat down with Mastercard’s Paolo Pelizzoli
and CTP’s Robert Christiansen to learn about their hybrid
cloud adoption.
14 | THE DOPPLER |
business control objectives — from security, to the actual
technologies, to the implementations -- are becoming more
accepted practices today for cloud deployment.
Paolo Pelizzoli: As we see
what’s happening in the
world around nationalism, the
on-the-soil [data sovereignty]
requirements have become
much more prevalent. It will
continue, so we need the abil-
ity to reach those countries,
deploy quickly and allow data
persistence to occur there.
The adoption side of it is a
double-edged sword. I think everybody wants to get there,
and everybody intuitively knows that they can get there.
But there are a lot of controls around privacy, as well as the
SOX compliance, and everything else that needs to be
adjusted to take cloud into account. And if the cloud is
rerouting traffic because one zone goes down and it flips to
another zone, is that still within the same borders, is it still
compliant, and can you prove that?
So while technologically this all can be done, from a compli-
ance perspective there are still a lot of different boxes left
to check before someone can allow payments data to flow
actively across the cloud — because that’s really the
panacea.
Gardner: We have often seen a lag between what technol-
ogy is capable of and what regulations, standards and best
practices allow. Are we beginning to see a compression of
that lag? Are regulators, in effect, catching up to what the
technology is capable of?