Infosys takes Finacle on cloud to Australia; will bring it to India soon

In Australia, Infosys built its own data centre in Melbourne to host the software, and is offering the banking client Finacle as a service

For decades, Finacle, one of the earliest make-in-India products, proved its robustness at global and Indian financial institutions, but the core banking platform of Infosys was confined to an on-premise model being hosted at the data centre of clients.

While parent Infosys kept on building add-ons and newer versions to keep the software abreast of clients’ demands in the financial services space, the very fact that it was an on-premise software was alienating itself from the disruption that was taking shape at the market place brought in by cloud.

In the next phase of its journey, Infosys is taking the core banking platform to the cloud. The Bengaluru-headquartered company has started offering Finacle on cloud in Australia, and plans to launch it in three more geographies, including India.

In Australia, Infosys built its own data centre in Melbourne to host the software, and is offering banking clients Finacle as a service. The cloud platform has already gone live at a leading Australian bank, and the company is in the process of rolling it out at two more banks in the country, according to Sanat Rao, chief business officer, Infosys Finacle.

“We are exploring other markets. However, while in Australia we are hosting it out of our own data centre. For other markets, we are exploring partnerships with Microsoft Azure and AWS, who not only have the speed and the scale, but also a much bigger cloud distribution infrastructure,” Rao said. “This will also help us concentrate on our banking solutions.”

Developed in 1999, Finacle has been Infosys’ most successful product till date.

Even though Infosys has stopped reporting Finacle’s growth numbers separately, it has now been made part of its second-largest subsidiary EdgeVerve Systems, which reported a revenue of Rs 24.39 billion in 2017-18, with a profit of Rs 4.54 billion. According to sources, Finacle accounts for more than 80 per cent of EdgeVerve’s revenues.

Apart from large global banks, Infosys is exploring the possibility of offering Finacle platform on the cloud to cooperative banks in India. While cloud is getting accepted by almost everybody after initial hiccups, banks also want to focus more on their core than on running data centres. “While banks don’t need to make upfront capital expenditure on data centres, cloud-based deployments give them the flexibility of paying, based on as much as they use through the subscription model. They don’t need to lock in to something as they are doing today; if volumes grow, they pay more,” Rao said.

While taking Finacle core banking solution to the cloud has given the company the flexibility of business model, including software as a service (SaaS), it is also helping it to make products, especially plug-in solutions, future-ready much faster. For example, its blockchain, payment and digital solutions are already cloud-ready. “Also, since fintech solutions are point solutions, these are easier to host on the cloud,” according to Rao.

In fintech, Rao said, Infosys Finacle had already partnered with more than 50 such companies in India, Singapore and the US.