Oracle Launches Financial Services Cloud update from January 2015

Looking to further define its version of the modern cloud and push companies to shift venerable, mission critical enterprise resource planning applications to the cloud, Oracle introduced the Oracle Financial Services Cloud.

The announcement came at Oracle's CloudWorld event in New York last week. It is for customers in the financial services industry, such as banks, insurance and investment companies, and securities institutions. Initially, only U.S.-based financial services companies are able to subscribe..

The new service lists in-region hosting as a feature. Over the last decade, Oracle consolidated data centers, and operates two primary U.S. data centers in Utah and Texas. The company has been aggressively expanding its data center presence globally, with recent announcements about data centers in Germany and China.

The announcement builds upon the cloud applications announcements made last fall at Oracle OpenWorld. The finance cloud joins Oracle's Industry Applications cloud portfolio

Keeping in step with the primary trepidations that businesses have about security, privacy, compliance, and regulatory requirements, Oracle maintains that the new Financial Services Cloud features data privacy, compliance services, enterprise-level support, and alignment with FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) rules.

The company said the cloud will offer complete integration with its ERP Cloud, Human Capital Management Cloud, and Customer Experience Cloud, as a part of its promise for an end-to-end solution.

Oracle continues to bet big in the cloud market. Its CTO Larry Ellison said he expects the company to bring in more than $1 billion in new annual Softare-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service subscription revenue in the next fiscal year.