7 Methodology This white paper is based on Aite Group’s conversations with executives with knowledge of their firm’s cloud technology adoption strategy at 19 global capital markets firms. It also includes proprietary Aite Group data gathered during research across the capital markets community during 2018. The Infrastructure Optimizers Infrastructure Optimizers display the characteristics of the tactical cloud adoption phase (see characteristics on page 14 here). Firms in this group primarily focus on reducing operational costs by migrating select functional areas to the public cloud. Typical migration targets are systems that underutilize internal compute and storage resources, or compute-intensive workloads such as research, risk modelling/stress testing, and scenario simulations. Infrastructure optimization through tactical migrations of select functions and workloads is an important part in the cloud adoption journey and should not be undervalued. Tactical Strategic Transformational Learn Self-taught, 3rd-party Organized training, Peer learning and sharing, reliance 3rd-party assisted 3rd-party staff aug. only Lead Teams by function, New cross-functional Cross-functional feature heroic project manager cloud team teams, greater autonomy Change is slow and Templates ensure good All change is constant, low Scale risky, ops heavy governance without manual risk and quickly fixed review Secure Fear of public internet, but Central identity, hybrid Trust only the right people, trust in private network network devices, and services Figure 3. The Infrastructure Optimizers in the Cloud Adoption Framework