The Swiss stock exchange operator planned to provide the banking industry with a secure local data cloud. But it has now stopped the project and the future of the Swiss cloud remains unclear.
Cloud solutions are seen as big game changers for Swiss banks which are facing a major squeeze on margins. But banks have the most sensitive of data to protect and security therefore enjoys top priority. A concern that is all the more important as most cloud providers are based abroad.
SIX, the Swiss stock exchange operator, considered itself the natural provider of a secure cloud solution and Chairman Romeo Lacher in 2018 announced the development of such a high-security cloud for Swiss banking. He promised to deliver a solution that would take into account all the security features and regulatory requirements that are relevant to the industry.
Will the SIX Cloud Ever Make It?
Now it has emerged that SIX and Hiag, its technology partner for the project, stopped their cooperation to develop the cloud. The project, which was set to be launched at the end of 2019, will be grounded, according to Swiss tech news portal «Inside-IT». The SIX project has not made it beyond the evaluation stage and the company is now back to square one.
The question is whether the Swiss cloud operated by SIX will ever be launched. Lacher last year had acknowledged that in principal, there was no need for another cloud solution provider.
Avaloq Project
Several Swiss operators are offering solutions – including Swisscom and Inventx – in addition to the foreign products offered by Google, IBM, Microsoft and Cognizant.
In Switzerland, Avaloq has teamed up with IBM to develop a «Swiss Banking Cloud». Clients of Avaloq are due be migrated to the cloud in the first half of 2019.
