Close
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Menu
Search
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home Cloud
    • Cloud

    Execs at Financial Firms Offer Their Take on Containers

    By
    Sean Michael Kerner
    -
    December 4, 2015
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin
      container user in financial services

      NEW YORK—Few, if any, industry verticals consume and spend as much on technology as the financial services community. At a panel session during the Tectonic Summit here, executives from Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Merrill Lynch discussed the opportunities they see with container usage.

      For Goldman Sachs, which has been evaluating cloud technology for the past six years, the goal with the cloud is to get its 8,000 application developers to be more productive, said J Ram, global head of cloud platforms at Goldman Sachs. “For us in the six year journey, we now have approximately 85 percent of our computing assets in a cloud framework,” Ram said, adding that he’s excited about containers, which help push forward cloud adoption in an industry-standard way.

      Bank of America Merrill Lynch has grown from acquisitions and mergers, which have brought about diverse technology and operational challenges. For Bank of America, cloud and container use are part of a larger plan to simplify and improve the operational control and compliance needs of the company, said Ryan Thomas, head of architecture and technology strategy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

      While cloud use for both financial services firms is helpful in reducing costs, container use is not being driven by cost factors. “It’s not about cost reduction; it’s about reinvesting the people and talent that we have,” Thomas said about Bank of America’s container strategy.

      Container use at Goldman Sachs is not being driven by cost saving, Ram said, adding that he does expect to realize some savings over time.

      “We expect that by standardizing on an operating structure, we can change the ratios of how many people we deploy for operations and how many we deploy for creating new opportunities,” he said.

      The operating efficiencies from container use are driving adoption among developers across all verticals, including financial services. Developers just want to build applications; they don’t want to have to wait for test cycles and procurement people to provision systems and resources.

      By embracing the container model, Bank of America is reducing the lag in its development processes, Thomas said.

      Getting just an incremental improvement in productivity can have a material impact on a large company’s ability to innovate.

      “We have 8,000 developers and 4,500 applications at Goldman Sachs, so a 5 percent change in productivity is a huge impact,” Ram said.

      At Bank of America, containers are used in the development and test environment, but not currently in production. Bank of America hasn’t entirely vetted an entire container stack for the various regulations with which the organization needs to comply, Thomas said. Containers will, however, continue to be a growing piece of the overall IT architecture at Bank of America, with more use expected in the next year.

      Goldman Sachs, however, is now running containers in production for what Ram referred to as a small number of applications. The initial use-cases have been focused on making sure Goldman Sachs developers can get the right workflow to improve efficiency, he said.

      “We started off very simple by going after applications that benefit from standardized operations,” Ram said.

      Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.

      Avatar
      Sean Michael Kerner
      Sean Michael Kerner is an Internet consultant, strategist, and contributor to several leading IT business web sites.

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Android

      Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro: Durability for Tough...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 5, 2020 0
      Have you ever dropped your phone, winced and felt the pain as it hit the sidewalk? Either the screen splintered like a windshield being...
      Read more
      Cloud

      Why Data Security Will Face Even Harsher...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 1, 2020 0
      Who would know more about details of the hacking process than an actual former career hacker? And who wants to understand all they can...
      Read more
      Cybersecurity

      How Veritas Is Shining a Light Into...

      eWEEK EDITORS - September 25, 2020 0
      Protecting data has always been one of the most important tasks in all of IT, yet as more companies become data companies at the...
      Read more
      Big Data and Analytics

      How NVIDIA A100 Station Brings Data Center...

      Zeus Kerravala - November 18, 2020 0
      There’s little debate that graphics processor unit manufacturer NVIDIA is the de facto standard when it comes to providing silicon to power machine learning...
      Read more
      Apple

      Why iPhone 12 Pro Makes Sense for...

      Wayne Rash - November 26, 2020 0
      If you’ve been watching the Apple commercials for the past three weeks, you already know what the company thinks will happen if you buy...
      Read more
      eWeek


      Contact Us | About | Sitemap

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      Terms of Service | Privacy Notice | Advertise | California - Do Not Sell My Information

      © 2021 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×