Is it time for central banks to adopt Microsoft Azure?

In recent months, as strict government lockdowns in response to the Covid-19 coronavirus have devastated economies all around the world, central banks and national treasuries have taken center-stage in leading the response. Depending on the laws of each country, central banks and national treasuries are tasked with controlling overall interest rates, the supply of money in the economy—and bailouts during economic crises.

In the latest round of economic turmoil, these government financial institutions have doled out huge sums in individual and corporate payments, grants, and loans. With a growing pool of data, organizations, and individuals to make sense of, will we see government financial institutions move more systems to the cloud and adopt platforms like Azure?

The state of cloud in government financial institutions

So far, central banks have tended more toward on-prem systems or lower levels of digitization than their peers in other parts of government or the financial sector. Ganesh Srinivasan, Director Global Head of Partnerships and Alliances at Microsoft partner Volante Technologies told MSDW: