No ceilings on cloud computing

Cloud computing has moved far beyond simply storing data - and many senior business leaders in the superannuation industry are missing out on the opportunity to support scale more cost-effectively.

That's according to Roland Slee, managing director, Asia Pacific, Bravura Solutions, who told delegates at the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) national conference that much of the regulatory concern they see in adopting cloud computing technology is unfounded.

Referring to private cloud computing, Slee said super companies could access the scale and economic benefits that the cloud could provide without having to run the risk of not knowing where members' data is residing.

"I think the chief difference between cloud computing and traditional approaches comes down to the notion of whether the infrastructure that supports your business is scaling up or out," he said.

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In traditional superannuation policy administration systems, an acquisition or a merger would see the super fund requesting a larger computer to process the new data. The platform of the super fund is then constrained by the capacity of that machine, which in itself represents a single-point of failure for the fund's entire database, Slee said.

"Secondly, as computers grow in capacity, their price grows exponentially, so it is actually economically unattractive to need to operate at a higher scale," he added.

Slee said that when accessing the cloud, there are "no fundamental ceilings on scalability" as a company's infrastructure is now composed of a large number of very low cost computers that as a whole can potentially form some of the most powerful computing configurations in the world.

"Fundamental record keeping is a given that's expected - the business advantage comes from the analytics, it's being able to study that data powerfully, moment by moment so that you can see what's happening in the business and respond in real time," he said.

"You drive the shift from clerical work to knowledge work so you staff can deliver more value by operating at a higher level."