What do the
movies have in common with banks? Aside from the billions of rands and dollars
that flow through both industries, they seem worlds apart. Yet, in the world of
cloud computing, they are suddenly close neighbours.
It’s not
just that both now tend to host their services in the cloud, accessible from
any connected device anywhere in the world. Now, they can take advantage of the
lessons, systems and strategies that each has adopted in the cloud.
One of the
best-known examples of leveraging the cloud for global impact is Netflix, which
hosts its content in the data centres of Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world’s
largest cloud computing service. Along with videos and movies, it also uses
applies regional licensing frameworks via this cloud platform, meaning it can instantly
launch new services and videos worldwide that comply with local regulations in
every country.
At last
week’s AWS Summit in Cape Town, it became clear just how powerful the cloud can
be for South African organisations. One of South Africa’s oldest insurance
companies, one of the country’s largest universities and the country’s newest
bank all took to the stage to share case studies of how the cloud had
transformed their operations.
That is
probably all that Old Mutual, the University of Pretoria and TymeBank have in
common, but they slotted in neatly to a bigger story: the cloud is available to
any institution or business, large or small, old or new. This is the underlying
secret to the astonishing growth of TymeBank, South Africa’s first fully digital
bank, and the first entity to receive a banking license in this country in 19
years.
Launched
earlier this year, it currently brings 100,000 new customers on board every
month. To achieve this, it uses no less than 54 distinct services available on
the AWS platform, says Dieter Botha, chief information officer of the bank.
“We’ve got so many services in the ecosystem. From a security point of view, every single one of our customers’ conversations with banks comes into the AWS world via a security layer, a content delivery network, web application firewall and AWS’s Advanced Shield, so we are pretty resilient from cyber attacks. The primary purpose is to make sure our face to the world is protected from attack.”
The most
fascinating aspect of their ability to leverage the AWS cloud, however, was the
fact that they were able to piggyback on processes and systems that streaming
video giant Netflix had created for its own services in the cloud.
“They’ve
got what we call the Netflix stack, a set of tools they put together that makes
it easier to manage microservices, small elements of computer processes that
run in what are called containers.”
Netflix built its own application containers, on top of an open-source platform, meaning that anyone could use and adapt the systems it had developed. However, that was only a starting point while TymeBank was pulling itself up by its own bootstraps.
“This is where
we say, if you take a step back, this stuff is very cool, but it translates
into an element of risk. From a risk point of view, rather than using that
scaffolding, we said let’s take our microservices container, and get an animal
like AWS to run it for us. So we’re effectively replacing the Netflix stack
with AWS and its native services.
“Now our techies can just focus on the code inside our operations rather than build the heavy scaffolding we had to worry about. The documentation is so good on AWS, because they have real technical gurus who understand the systems, that it de-risks our services.”
Netflix
wasn’t the only everyday consumer service that played its part on building
TymeBank. It turns out that many of the global giants have made their systems
and learnings available to anyone on the world. The bank turned to a product
from none other than Facebook to help build its Web presence.
“When you
look under the hood of our Internet banking product, the programming language
is JavaScript, but Facebook has packed it into a framework for building their
pages. They then open-sourced it, and called it React, which makes it easier to
use it. Our Internet banking product is built using the Facebook React
framework. In the exact same way, Netflix are also releasing frameworks to the Open
Source community all the time.”
As TymeBank
refines its services and migrates deeper and deeper into the Amazon cloud, it
has also been able to cut costs dramatically.
“We found
as we’ve grown and become more comfortable in that cloud and more skilled in
the use of the cloud, we began consuming more native services, meaning they are
designed to run in the cloud. That’s a really big deal for us. That’s when you
see the benefits of the cloud ecosystem. One native service can trigger
another, because they talk to each other well.
“This
includes a set of services that help you manage your life and bills in the cloud.
People forget about costs. Now we can tag a lot of our services in the AWS
cloud to understand exactly what is driving cost points, and we are able to
manage costs right down to the level of the techies.
“Traditionally, if you sign a contract with a big supplier, it gets filed away, and the techies don’t even know what is driving costs. By tagging services in the cloud, you’re giving cost knowledge to your techies, and it’s in their power to push it up and down. You give them the power to understand costs and manage them. That’s never been possible before.”
This partly explains why TymeBank is able to bring the monthly cost of having a bank account to exactly zero. It is only when one starts using its services that banking fees kick in.
However,
the fact that a 174-year-old insurance company like Old Mutual and a
156-year-old like Standard Bank are also rapidly migrating to the AWS platform is
a clear message that the cloud is not just for newcomers.
Both institutions
began offering their services in the middle of the 18th century,
when the concept of technology barely existed. Yet, the constant evolution and
falling price of cutting-edge tech like cloud computing has meant they can not
only survive, but even thrive, in the presence of young upstarts like TymeBank.
- Arthur Goldstuck is founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief
of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram on @art2gee
