Company insight
Green light for financial digital transformation
The digital transition of banking is gaining pace. Financial services providers are, however, currently weighing up their options and considering how best to adapt. Roger Süess, CEO at Green, speaks of the choices banks are having to make and how his company’s expertise can help.
he financial services sector has long been known as one of innovation – both client facing and back office. Over the past few years, in fact, it has changed beyond recognition – thanks largely to the adoption of new technologies. Online banking, apps and digital trading platforms are all now commonplace, bringing with them a new age of financial services to consumers.
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But these changes have been shadowed by significant questions for those heading financial institutions: how do we make the best use of technology to the benefit of us and our customers, and how do we do this in an efficient and cost-effective way? With it also comes a totally new commodity: data. This priceless resource is shaping the future of banking – as it is many other industries. It is not easily handled, though, and is subject to considerable regulation and cost. As any industry insider knows, data centres have traditionally been crucial here, with banks traditionally storing their own data at their own expense. But change is coming. Today, after all, many banks are looking further afield – to specialist data and cloud services providers.
Roger Süess, CEO, Green
divided by the energy required to operate its systems. This is expressed in a score ranging from 1.2 to 3.0, the so-called power utilisation effectiveness (PUE). A score of 1.2 is ‘very efficient’, while one of 3.0 is ‘very inefficient’.
Significant efficiencies
Roger Süess, CEO at Green, says that as technology evolves, energy consumption at today’s modern data centres has significantly improved. “If you compare older centres to the ones that we now design, it’s completely different,” he explains. “Your classic data centres have PUEs of two, maybe even above two, particularly those run by enterprises themselves. We are very much pushing to narrow it to just over one.” After first launching as a pioneer, offering the first connectivity services in Switzerland in 1995, today Green has evolved to be a leading provider of digital services across the country. The company
“Something I think is generally true, particularly for industries that are heavily digitised like banking, is that they start to make their cloud strategy a business strategy.”
Aside from the regulation of data storage, meanwhile, there are other issues too – not least energy consumption and related costs. The sector is open about how much it consumes, providing details of the ratio of total energy used at the facility,
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operates four data hubs across Zurich, providing services for those living and working throughout the confederation. With exceptional interconnection, the sites comprise two campuses of hyperscale class and two satellites. “In addition to that
base function infrastructure, Green also provides solutions like IaaS (infrastructure as a service), communication and collaboration services in the enterprise stack,” says Süess, working with suppliers, carriers and developers and engineers all on the Green platform.
At the beginning of 2021, the company announced it was investing in its second data campus, saying it was a “prominent statement” of intent of “Green’s vision to play a part in evolving Switzerland into an innovative location for secure and sustainable data centres”. The site will be four times bigger than New York’s Times Square, at 46,000m2 cost an estimated £395m.
, and will
The growing use of data centres and cloud services continues apace within the financial services sector, in part fuelled by the pandemic. All the same, Covid merely hastened their adoption – banks were already charging towards a digital future. Green, for its part, is at the forefront of this transition. It was recognised as the ‘Leading Data Centre Provider’ after independent analysis from Information Services Group, and became the first Swiss operator to receive the ‘M&O Stamp of Approval’ for its management and operations from the Uptime Institute. “Innovation, technical competence and dedication to deliver 100% uptime of our services have built our reputation as a reliable and trusted partner,” explains Süess. “With our comprehensive digital platform we want to help customers move their business and IT forward, shaping their digital future and letting them grow.” As part of that digital future, Süess sees an increasing shift among companies in the financial services sector, but also more broadly across industry, from their own
Future Banking /
www.nsbanking.com
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