Today’s topics include Saxo Bank moving its entire fintech stack to Microsoft’s cloud, and Google discontinuing its Allo chat app to focus on RCS messaging.
Microsoft and Saxo Bank, a Denmark-based bank and financial technology services provider, announced a strategic partnership on April 24 where Saxo Bank will move its entire technology stack to Microsoft’s Azure Cloud.
More than 100 financial institutions use Saxo Bank’s trading platforms, and the firm also maintains 120 white-label partnerships along with trading and investment technologies that offer banks and brokerage firms access to more than 35,000 financial instruments.
With Saxo Bank anticipating new clients, founder and CEO Kim Fournais said, “By leveraging the Microsoft Cloud, we can spend more time on developing technology and less time on running it, allowing us to continue to stay at the forefront of client-focused digitization and support our ambitious growth plans.”
The partnership may also help improve cloud computing’s standing in the eyes of regulators, he said.
Google has decided to stop work on its Allo messaging app for Android and iOS devices and instead focus on updating its native Android Messages app with features based on the Rich Communications Services protocol while continuing to push for broad carrier adoption of the RCS standard.
Going forward, Android Messages will incorporate more RCS chat features to bring the app on par with other popular cross-platform messaging apps like WhatsApp.
With work on Allo now paused, Google will push ahead with its efforts to drive broad adoption of the RCS standard, which is an attempt by Google and several other companies in the mobile industry to update standard SMS text messaging apps with features like video sharing, group messaging, chat receipts and typing indicators.