Customers today are demanding more compelling user experiences from their banks.
“They’re demanding more access, they’re demanding higher levels of performance,” Fastly Director of Serverless Support Strategy Austin Spires told PYMNTS in an interview.
And crafting those new experiences requires technology that is efficient and responsive, helping financial institutions (FIs) to innovate even as they navigate deeper movement into digital channels to engage customers in an always-on economy.
Edge computing can help FIs reduce data processing costs and deliver new content to end users, broadening the products and services available in conducting day-to-day financial life across digital channels.
See also: Fastly Says Edge Cloud Computing Is Best Way for FIs to Get Up Close and Personal
But as these banks embrace more systems, adding more software into the mix and new vendors into their supply chains, there’s an overarching challenge.
“All of those systems emit data,” especially as companies move to the cloud, Spires told PYMNTS, “and collecting that data can result in some surprise costs when it comes time to manage that data.”
To combat those costs, which may come several months down the line and result in a negative impact on margins, he said there can be an effective solution: Make sure that, as a firm, you’re collecting only the data that you need.
Take Only What You Need
As Spires told PYMNTS: “There are some requirements for multiple years’ worth of storage, and for data retention — but not every system and not every piece of data requires that level of storage.”
He noted, too, that another way for companies to cut down on data-related costs is to build strong data governance models. With the optimal architecture in place, they can ensure that only unique data are being captured. Redundant data has its costs too, particularly when it comes to collection and storage.
The move to the cloud — and particularly toward edge computing — can help small and large firms alike, he noted. In edge computing, conceptually speaking, data are brought closer by various parties that need to access that information, using application programming interfaces (APIs) to capture and deploy data faster and more seamlessly.
“Previously, building systems that were highly personal, data-driven and secure — well, that was an extremely expensive operation,” Spires said. “But newer-edge cloud systems are designed to allow for a higher degree of user personalization without sacrificing data or security.”
In addition, those systems can run in parallel with existing legacy infrastructure, as the latter can be phased out gradually rather than through a rip-and-replace strategy that might prove disruptive to FIs, he said.
The shift toward edge computing can help incumbent firms more fully embrace the mobile initiatives that are transforming payments and the ways in which we interact with the modern economy. That’s due in part to the fact that edge computing — either as a complement or eventual replacement for FIs’ traditional or legacy content delivery networks — allows firms to reduce latency while ramping up scalability, which in turn helps with the technical aspects of load balancing and imaging optimization.
“If we take a step back, mobile isn’t inherently about the device in our pocket,” Spires said. “It’s about the device that we’re carrying with us at all times. And so, this goes back to how customers want to do business.”
Those customers want to access their data, he said. They want to do everything they need to do when they want to do it. That may be while they’re in the car, for example, or in a location with poor reception, when they’re willing to sacrifice the quality they would get from a “richer” application.
“That’s where the edge cloud shines — bringing computing and processes close to the physical end users,” he told PYMNTS.
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