Cloud and Data Platforms at The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation

Strategy for Integrating Cloud Technologies into the Enterprise Architecture

Thank you. Over the past ten years, DTCC has been leveraging the public cloud for different initiatives and workloads. This brought varying levels of success and challenges during that time period. When I joined two years ago, I was asked how we get more of the benefits from the public cloud that were promised. Primarily, DTCC wanted to see improvements to the speed of delivery, increase flexibility, manage costs effectively, and easy access to innovation. As I learned the landscape of the current state, there were a few things that began to come to light. While DTCC was a pioneer in leveraging public cloud starting a decade ago, there were gaps in how it evolved. The public cloud, primarily the use of AWS, was implemented similarly to a data center and federated across many technology teams. While the model of implementing cloud technology as a project or program got things moving, it did not keep it evolving. 

In order to deliver on all the promises of cloud computing, we had to think differently about how we addressed what was holding us back from getting the results we wanted. We introduced the Cloud Center for Enablement (CC4E). This organization was to bring all those federated technologies together under one umbrella to deliver a platform. The CC4E would not only re-introduce the public cloud but also how we consume it. This new team takes responsibility for running the cloud like a business, focused on creating products holistically from product management to operations, with the goal of making the developer experience as seamless as possible to use public cloud technologies. If we can remove the toil management, manual processes, and handoffs to create automated, secure consumable products, this allows development teams to own more without dependency on technology teams. With that in mind, we went to work to align skills and redesign the public cloud (AWS) to meet the latest best practices in what we call AWS as a Platform. 

  ​An agile operating model allows us to organize our cross-functional teams to deliver end-to-end value and enable them to build, own, and operate the products they create. 

The structure of the organization is one part of the strategy to ensure we can execute the goals of the company. Now that the structure is in place, DTCC is looking to leverage the public cloud for Regulation Systems Compliance and Integrity (Reg SCI) workloads. Working closely with our regulators to meet strict resiliency and security controls, DTCC will move the financial markets forward into the public cloud. Once we are able to comfortably put the most critical workloads in public loud, it allows us to create new and exciting offerings while leveraging the innovations that come with the technology. This will transform the financial markets as DTCC offers a more seamless experience for our clients and potentially changes the way financial data is shared or consumed.  

Challenges during the Adoption of Agile That Current Services Are Unable to Solve

Like many others going through transformation, the term Agile is used extensively. However, the challenge is ensuring that the term means the same for everyone. As a technology leader for over 20 years, I have learned that any transformation falls down without a shared understanding of the goals, terminology, and blueprint. Everyone needs to know the why: we are doing something, and things may not be broken, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn't change or adapt. Traditional practices with handoffs, delays, and unrealized return on investments could be solved by better alignment of resources, technologies, and processes.

As we began to think about platforms as products to focus on being more client-centric, the introduction of the CC4E gave us an opportunity to think differently about how we deliver services. An agile operating model allows us to organize our cross-functional teams to deliver end-to-end value and enable them to build, own, and operate the products they create. The team's mission is to be an engine of cloud transformation and innovation by providing highly secure, reliable, nimbler offerings leveraging public cloud platforms.

Benefits of this shift include:

● A strong focus on self-service and democratization.

● Organize with the intent of delegating control as much as possible.

● Align best practices to cloud-native solutions with guardrails and protection mechanisms.

● Maximizes innovation and minimizes operational overhead while driving the evolution to modernize IT processes

● Better alignment with consumer needs through reusable patterns that accelerate onboarding.

● Reduced compliance overhead via improved visibility, operations, and governance, delivering more secure solutions in less time

The Future of Our Cloud and Data Platform Strategy

The vision is a simple one: Enable DTCC by building the greatest cloud and data platforms to deliver business value. 

In order to do that, we need to continually challenge the status quo. We must work to offer new technologies in a secure, resilient, and reliable way for our organizations. By providing opportunities to experiment, learn, and question the way we do things today.   The platforms around cloud and data will not slow down, and neither should we. In order to provide quicker access to data across our partners and leverage new technologies, DTCC has continually invested in the people. Having the right people is most critical, and fostering a culture of trust among team members gives us additional flexibility to evolve to whatever comes next.

Advice to Professionals Working in the Tech Industry

There is one piece of advice I continually use, and that is to listen, listen, listen. I have seen many changes over my career, and none of them have been successful without understanding the challenges of each company. The technologies may be similar, but the people, processes, and dynamics have never been identical.   There may be an urge to make a big move or try to push a solution that worked before; instead, try stepping back, asking questions, and listening. I tend to find ways to slow down to go fast, which means I like to gather the data, understand the impact, and be methodical about what I want to achieve. All leaders have to understand the job is to guide the teams to a shared goal. This is done by understanding the people in the organization and developing a strategy that fosters success.