2022‑2023 Cloud‑Native Technology Survey in the Financial Industry

Amid the digital wave, cloud‑native technologies are reshaping industries, driving business innovation and ecosystem transformation.

The Cloud‑Native Technology Practice Alliance (CNBPA), together with leading vendors F5 and Lingque Cloud, launched the fifth edition (2022‑2023) of the "Traditional Industry Cloud‑Native Technology Implementation Survey – Finance Edition" to explore the impact of cloud‑native tech on the financial sector.

Following the research methodology used since 2018, the survey takes a full‑stack view of cloud‑native technology, focusing on containers, micro‑services, DevOps, platform engineering, and FinOps. A total of 294 valid questionnaires were collected from banks, insurance companies, securities firms and other financial institutions of varying sizes.

Key Findings

01  Cloud‑native adoption is spreading to small‑ and medium‑size financial institutions. The proportion of respondents with fewer than 500 servers has increased, indicating a shift from large‑scale institutions to regional commercial banks, city‑level banks, insurance, securities and asset‑management firms.

02  Hybrid multi‑cloud deployment has become mainstream. About 92% of respondents already use cloud services, and the share of multi‑cloud/hybrid‑cloud deployments rose by nearly 15% year‑on‑year, making it the dominant deployment model in finance.

03  FinOps is a new direction for cost management. Over 90% of financial firms reported IT cost reductions through cloud‑native adoption, and more than 60% have embraced FinOps to align finance, operations and development.

04  Platform engineering is the new trend for DevOps implementation. More than 40% of firms have adopted commercial DevOps platforms, and platform engineering ranks highest among emerging cloud‑native directions, enabling unified infrastructure and application management.

05  Other observations

Agile update cycles: over 64% of firms update weekly or faster.

External load balancers remain the preferred solution for high‑availability.

Bare‑metal servers are gaining traction, with adoption 1.5 times higher than the previous year.

Micro‑services are used by more than 60% of respondents, offering modularity, scalability and support for agile development.

Architecture transformation is challenging; over 83% of firms collaborate with third‑party vendors to accelerate cloud‑native adoption.

Conclusion – The 2023 data shows that cloud‑native transformation is now a necessity for financial IT teams. Hybrid multi‑cloud, FinOps and platform engineering are the most关注 (concerned) areas, driving efficiency, cost savings and better customer experiences.

The report aims to provide new ideas for financial enterprises embarking on cloud‑native digital transformation.