Financial services’ investment in high performance computing will grow this year and firms will make more use of existing investments for increased risk analysis, according to a survey of firms by Platform Computing, a Canadian company that sells management software.

Platform’s survey of senior IT executives at 35 financial services firms highlights that cost reduction (54 per cent) and meeting increased risk management needs (23 per cent) are the main reasons for banks to invest in HPC solutions in 2009.

Virtualisation, meanwhile, is the “watch-word” for banks in 2009 as it is considered the infrastructure priority by the majority of banks (54 per cent) in 2009, compared to HPC (17 per cent) and cloud computing (14 per cent).

With regards to cloud computing, the majority of respondents (51 per cent) said they didn’t think that 2009 would be its year. Along with the 31 per cent that did not know, the respondents cited 2010 as the year of cloud computing.

Cloud computing is internet-based - hence the expression “cloud” - development and use of computer technology

What is preventing firms from adopting cloud computing is the fact it is at early stage adoption (29 per cent) and also because it is still an ill-defined term (29 per cent). Security (17 per cent) was then cited as the next major barrier for adoption, especially as banks look to external clouds, and lack of management buy-in (9 per cent).