The Benefits of Implementing Cloud Computing for Judo Bank: A Case Study

Faculty of Higher Education

Unit Details	Unit Name
	Code	HM6032
	Year	2024
	Trimester number

Assessment Details	Assessment Name	Leveraging IT for Managers
	Due Date: dd/mm/yyyy

Group Number

	** only list students who have contributed to this assignment
Group Details	Student ID	First Name	Family Name	Contribution %

Group Submission Declaration	Integrity Declaration We have read and understand academic integrity policies and practices and our assessment does not violate these.
Student ID		First Name	Family Name

Submission Date

Executive Summary

This report focuses on explaining the benefits of implementing cloud computing over traditional infrastructure by analysing the case study of Judo Bank which is an Australian neobank that offers banking services to SMEs. The concept of cloud computing is highly advantageous because it allows companies to scale their IT framework easily provides financial, and operational flexibility, and improves security over installation approaches. In the case of Judo Bank, integrating cloud technology was an essential driver of the fast-growing organization and provided flexibility, particularly in a highly competitive environment. For example, the report captures the major issues that Judo Bank faced before moving to the cloud including scalability issues and security challenges. It also explains how the bank realized cloud computing as one of the most suitable solutions for the organization to beat all the problems and make better decisions as well as the procedure that was followed before adopting this technology. They have highlighted that the implementation phase proposed the major challenge for Judo Bank such as it would have to introduce changes in its work while fulfilling the requirements of the regulator and maintaining the security of the operations. The outcome showed that operational efficiency and customer services were improved which would continue to provide a basis for the bank’s growth.

Research the advantages of cloud computing technology over the traditional infrastructure model.

Introduction

This report is all about the use of cloud computing in an organization that is facing issues in the traditional infrastructure of the company's working process. Judo Bank is a start-up bank operating specifically in the Australian market with specialized services for SMEs. Judo Bank was started in 2016 to offer value-added banking services through the effective use of technological tools and services along with focusing on business requirements. While other banks operate in conventional forms, Judo was designed to operate in the digital paradigm resulting in optimizing all processes and services for customers. Several works show the possible benefits of using cloud computing for financial institutions. This report, the impact of adopting the cloud computing model that helps enterprises to achieve operational performance gains, minimize investment costs, and achieve increased system flexibility. Inheritance technologies have associated high operational expenses and comparatively low adaptability, especially for coming industries such as banking. To grow beyond this model while keeping operating expenses as efficient as possible, Judo Bank identified the evolving impracticality of legacy infrastructure. Judo Bank encountered several issues with the first IT system with growth scaling and data protection according to the regulations. Being a mobile-first bank for SMEs that is using specific technologies the bank had to have an optimal architecture that could support scale at a low cost. The financial institutions are confirmed to high standard rules of data protection that Judo Bank had to delicate in its system to handle the financial data securely. The existing approach has been inefficient and unable to support future growth thereby creating the basis for a new architecture.

Challenges

Judo Bank faced several challenges that stemmed from its reliance on traditional IT infrastructure before adopting cloud computing:

Configurability Problems

Judo Bank expanded operations in the market but faced challenges in its advancement strategy to grow rapidly. On-premises servers require a huge initial expense and a lot of time to effect changes. Every time the bank added new clients or new services to the offers the structure that supported it had to be increased further which only slowed growth (Hughes et al., 2021). This was a big problem during the growth and expansion phases because the overall focus was put on customer demand satisfaction and it was becoming difficult to serve customers without compromising the quality of service.

Figure 1 Plan and Design a Data Center

Source: (Hughes et al., 2021)

Price Restrictions

The traditional IT infrastructure was capital intensive because of the initial costs of procuring physical servers and other necessary licenses for the software to run as well as other costs that are incurred once the project has been started. For a fast-growing bank such as Judo, this was not a sustainable model. Keeping physical servers, managing the software, and guaranteeing that the system is available occupied most of the company’s IT budget.

Privacy and Obedience

Judo Bank is a financial institution that could not avoid certain regulatory requirements such as APRA (Australia Prudential Regulation Authority) guidelines, the Privacy Act, and international standards such as GDPR (Shavshukov & Zhuravleva, 2023). Financial data could not be compromised and the infrastructure proved disobedient to immediate security changes and vulnerability tracking. The IT systems provided for protection of the bank’s data were prone to frequent repairing which created new risks of downtimes and vulnerabilities within the reinforcing processes.

Professional Steadiness and Calamity Retrieval

The continuity of service provision and ideal needed to be an excellent disaster recovery plan suited to Judo Bank’s needs well. The risk associated with traditional infrastructure models proved dangerous in this area because it involved placing physical servers in a single data centre. If there is an earthquake, a power failure that can make an impact on servers cease to function and the bank knew that there was a possibility that it would be unable to recover all of the data that could only remain offline for a very long time.

Operative Elasticity

Judo Bank’s operations demanded that it had to work efficiently and address changing market and customer needs. The conventional structure restrained the bank in the manner it could introduce new services to fit the changing needs of the business (Omisore et al., 2020). This lack of flexibility was an issue because it was abrasive against the neobank’s goal of being as innovative as possible in delivering risky customer-focused services.

Those threats that adopted these characteristics provided Judo Bank with significant pressures and compelled the bank to seek out other solutions that could solve the above-mentioned limitations of conventional IT setups but also afford the institution the possibility to scale up safely.

Discussion

It can be seen that the present study aims at identifying cloud computing as the optimal solution. As a neo-bank focusing on SMEs, Judo Bank had to need for a fast-growing IT architecture that should be scalable, flexible, reliable, and cost-efficient because it may use less energy (Bharany et al., 2022). The authors establish that as the banking services giant enlarged its pool of customers and range of services offered by its originally centralized traditional structure it revealed real drawbacks where adaptability in size and type of service were concerned. The bank looked at cloud computing as the solution to implement to without fully ruling out the public clouds such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. The ability to pay for services when required is the flexibility accorded by cloud computing and the ability to scale particular resources to meet particular needs resonated well with Judo Bank’s objective of keeping a lean operation while supporting development. These include cost benefits which are important for their operations with increased flexibility in operations and implementation scalability among other benefits that can help them to make better decisions on matters concerning the efficiency of the decision-making system when it comes to future projects.

Primary Explore and Investigation

The leadership of the organization began the change process for cloud solutions through research on different types of solutions. They discussed various cases and researched information that showed the benefits of cloud solutions in the sphere of financial services. Judo Bank’s team also revisited some external knowledge to learn about the current trends and opportunities in judo computing regarding security, scalability, cost efficiency, and compliance with regulatory requirements. The specific offerings of AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud were compared by Judo Bank (Rana et al., 2023).

Cost-Effectiveness Investigation

The concepts of cost and benefit were examined to match the costs of infrastructure tradition to cloud computing. The assessment showed that the cloud was likely to cut down capital costs by eliminating large sums that are used to purchase physical machines, establish data centres, or hire IT staff. Taking into consideration that Judo Bank adopted the pay-as-you-go model and it could cover only the necessary IT costs that became clear by doing this so the company could minimize the rates of the wasted money. The analysis also pointed out long-term operative cost savings. AWS provides services such as operating system updates, system and application maintenance, and monitoring which eliminates the need for in-house IT assistance and support infrastructure.

Safety and Submission Contemplations

Of all the important signs that were assessed in the process of decision making probably the most essential cue was the compliance of the selected cloud solution with the APRA (Australian Prudential Regulation Authority) and other international requirements. It was a concern to Judo Bank to keep data safe, encrypted, and stored locally due to the sensitivity of the data that is involved in financial business (Shawkat et al., 2022). The IT team of Judo Bank consulted AWS regarding the possibility of using advanced security measures on the platform. AWS offered a complete suite of enhanced security solutions on top of which were possibilities of encryption of data and strong access control.

Figure 2 The Cloud Computing

Source: (Shawkat et al., 2022)

Hazard Valuation

The migration to the clouds also came with some risk analysis being conducted in the process. Judo Bank had to guarantee that possible risks, including data leakage, server unavailability, or low rate of performance would not occur during and after the migration. The IT department of the bank along with external consultants provided solutions for risk management of the IT infrastructure used at the bank that provided solutions such as backup systems, fail-over options, and periodic security checkups. This phase is also famously committed to making contingency plans for disruption of business continuity in the migration process. Judo Bank developed a proper business continuity plan which defines a set of actions that must be taken in case of system breakdowns or cyberattacks.

Feasibility Study

In the intention of promoting the proof of concept to migrate to cloud Judo Bank steered its journey by migrating non-critical applications to AWS. This made it easy for the bank to check the effectiveness of migrating upcoming improvements, integration of systems, and any possible problems before a complex migration (Kabashkin et al., 2024). This may identify the following advantages of carrying out the pilot phase where system performance advanced and more significant cuts in operating expenses were achieved with more effective security methods adopted.

Implementation

At Judo Bank, the migration to a full-scale cloud was done systematically to avoid possible interference and to ensure that all the processes ran smoothly.

Information Migration

Judo Bank initially started by moving all its client information, transactions, and company records to the AWS cloud platform. This process was done systematically by going through the following step-by-step process to avoid losing data or having it exposed to the wrong people. Data security measures involved the use of encryption and backup from AWS.

Application Reconstruction

Some of the key banking applications used by Judo Bank were built in ways that created incompatibilities with the AWS cloud ecosystem (Angelakos, 2022). The bank collaborated with AWS’s professional services focused on reshaping legacy applications to tackle necessary changes and functions in the new distributed model.

Safety and Agreement Procedures

AWS offered the following security features to Judo Bank such as end-of-communication encryption, data verification involving one or more factors, and automated security regulation at timely intervals. There was enhancement of data protection in the bank as well as meeting of APRA and international set regulatory requirement (North & Wilson, 2020).

Employer Exercise

There was intensive training held by Judo Bank to sensitize its IT personnel for handling and enhancing the new cloud structure. Besides, training activities managed by AWS showed the bank employees with skills necessary for the CEO’s effective functioning.

Conference Potentials

The outcomes generated in the process met and even surpassed the expectations which allowed for the reduction of costs connected with IT infrastructures, the enhancement of system performance, and improving scalability of the key systems (Jia et al., 2020). Judo Bank was able to expand or reduce its services offering depending on market requirements and undertake these promptly.

Conclusion

In conclusion, cloud computing technology migration has offered Judo Bank a practical means to overcome constraints associated with the application of traditional structures since the method enables the bank to expand, secure, and affordable. Through cloud computing, Judo Bank can cut back on operating expenses, enjoy quicker processing performance, and protect sensitive information for compliance with industry rules. The initial phased approach enabled the bank to avoid a lot of disruptions and also facilitated the integration of remaining applications running on the traditional systems to the cloud platforms. Due to the implementation of AWS cloud infrastructure in Judo Bank, it was possible to record a high level of optimization of business processes and the company’s interaction with customers. Judo had the agility it needed due to the ability to scale resources on demand to compete in a competitive financial services market.

Recommendations

To further optimize its cloud computing infrastructure and continue leveraging the benefits, Judo Bank should focus on the following recommendations as

Price Upgrading

Many cloud computing opportunities result in saving costs and Judo Bank needs to consistently review the utilization of cloud resources. The bank can implement automatic management tools such as ACE (AWS Cost Explorer) to help track usage patterns and find the under-utilized resources thereby reducing the value of less usage of the resources. The bank will ensure cloud services are only paid for what it needs with regular audits of those services.

Influenced Privacy Procedures

In response to cyber threats always improving Judo Bank should always be updating their security protocols and investing in advanced threat detection systems such as AI-based security tools. Real-time security breaches can be detected by these systems and responded to accordingly. Adopting a zero-trust architecture in the bank will further fortify its defences by not trusting any user or device.

Tragedy Retrieval and Process Regularity

In order to get to a resilient level, Judo Bank should definitely consider an even more robust disaster recovery plan which would include multi-region backups and automated failover systems. The bank can guarantee business continuity by having critical data stored in multiple geographic regions and preventing them from failing or being destroyed from the regional perspective. This will help cut down on downtime and keep customer trust.

Continuous Innovation and Staff Training

As the cloud technology changes, Judo Bank should continue to be in a continuous innovation mode always looking for new services that cloud providers are providing. Ongoing training of its IT staff on investment will enable the team to be well-informed about the latest advancements in the cloud and provide its team with the best utilization of the infrastructure.

References

Angelakos, M. (2022) ‘Building a Cloud Computing Program to Improve Operating Efficiency and Enable Innovation (Doctoral dissertation, Johns Hopkins University)’, pp. 1-165. https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/items/5777845d-4d95-48cf-afb7-644d71b5da27

Bharany, S., Sharma, S., Khalaf, O.I., Abdulsahib, G.M., Al Humaimeedy, A.S., Aldhyani, T.H., Maashi, M. & Alkahtani, H. (2022) ‘A systematic survey on energy-efficient techniques in sustainable cloud computing’, Sustainability, 14(10), pp. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14106256

Hughes, L., Sweeney, D. & Kasunic, M., 2021. Planning and Design Considerations for On-Premises Computing Environments. pp. 1-52. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/trecms/pdf/AD1138252.pdf

Jia, Z., Lin, S., Gao, M., Zaharia, M. & Aiken, A. (2020) ‘Improving the accuracy, scalability, and performance of graph neural networks with roc’, Proceedings of Machine Learning and Systems, 2, pp.187-198. https://proceedings.mlsys.org/paper_files/paper/2020/hash/91fc23ceccb664ebb0cf4257e1ba9c51-Abstract.html

Kabashkin, I., Perekrestov, V., Tyncherov, T., Shoshin, L. & Susanin, V. (2024) ‘Framework for Integration of Health Monitoring Systems in Life Cycle Management for Aviation Sustainability and Cost Efficiency’, Sustainability, 16(14), pp. 1-40. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16146154

North, G. & Wilson, T. (2020) ‘Has the Australian prudential regulation authority done enough to meet its legislated objectives and prepare Australia for the next financial crisis?’, University of New South Wales Law Journal, The, 43(2), pp.552-580. https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/informit.238148024277506

Omisore, O.M., Han, S., Xiong, J., Li, H., Li, Z. & Wang, L. (2020) ‘A review on flexible robotic systems for minimally invasive surgery’, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems, 52(1), pp.631-644. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9226520/

Rana, M.E., Yik, T.M. & Hameed, V.A. (2023) ‘Cloud Computing Adoption in the Banking Sector: A Comparative Analysis of Three Major CSPs’, In 2023 IEEE 6th International Conference on Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (BDAI), pp. 244-250. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10256870/

Shavshukov, V.M. & Zhuravleva, N.A. (2023) ‘National and International financial market regulation and supervision Systems: Challenges and solutions’, Journal of Risk and Financial Management, 16(6), pp. 1-25. https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm16060289

Shawkat, S.A., Tuama, B.A. & Al_Barazanchi, I. (2022) ‘Proposed system for data security in distributed computing in using? triple data encryption standard and? Rivest Shamir? Adlemen’, International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering, 12(6), pp. 1-10. http://ijece.iaescore.com/