In recent years, digital transformation has become a necessary prerequisite for the development of various industries. As far as the financial industry is concerned, in the face of continuous impact from factors such as policies and new technologies, financial institutions represented by banks have pressed the accelerator button under the wave of digital transformation.
At the beginning of 22, the financial management department successively issued important guiding documents such as the "Fintech Development Plan (2022~2025)" and "Guiding Opinions on the Digital Transformation of the Banking and Insurance Industry". The successive introduction of digital transformation guidelines and new industry regulations has pointed out the development direction and focus for the digital transformation of the financial industry. Some financial companies that have already started digital construction, in the process of transformation practice, combined with policy guidance, give full play to their own advantages, use the innovation engine of financial technology, and embark on the road of digital transformation from multiple breakthroughs to in-depth development.
The cloud-native architecture can efficiently empower financial enterprises to speed up business delivery, reduce operating costs, enable financial businesses to more easily access innovative technologies, and improve the extensive reach of channels. Therefore, cloud native technology has been highly valued by the industry and has become an important weapon to promote the digital transformation of the financial industry.
On September 15, Mr. Wu Jingtao, Vice President of Beijing Digital China Yunke Information Technology Co., Ltd., was invited to participate in the 2022 Financial Technology Innovation Engine Technology Forum jointly planned by the "China Financial Computer" magazine and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Financial Technology Research Institute series of activities. Together with the leaders of ICBC Software Development Center, Bank of Communications Software Development Center, and China Guangfa Bank R&D Center, they gathered in online forums to share their cloud-native technology practice results, discuss new trends and new ideas in technology development, and create better financial technology sharing ecology.
In this online forum, Wu Jingtao focused on the hot topic of cloud native, combined with years of research and practice of the team, and expressed her views on business sustainability and application sustainability in the era of digital intelligence.
Any technology has the possibility of being subverted and reconstructed
In the process of technological development, in order to conform to the trend of the market and guided by factors such as policies, culture, and technology, the original technology has been constantly subverted and reconstructed. Taking load balancing as an example, with the gradual increase in the popularity of domestic cloud native technology and the accelerated popularization of information technology application innovation in financial scenarios. How to subvert load balancing and reconstruct a more logical IT architecture to meet customer needs has become a new topic.
Sustainability Architecture, Observability Capabilities
In the era of digital intelligence, business sustainability is largely related to application sustainability. Unifying traditional architecture and cloud-native architecture to achieve compatibility and synergy is the best sustainable service provided by fintech vendors.
As a long-term partner in the digital transformation of financial institutions, in order to achieve technological breakthroughs in load balancing, China Cloud Technology has innovatively proposed a development concept centered on improving sustainability, observability and AIOps automation capabilities. Its core value covers building resilience IT, improving data center utilization, and strengthening inter-departmental collaboration. Among them, resilient IT refers to helping enterprises build a MAA (Maximum Available Architect) platform in a cloud-native, autonomous and controllable environment, helping customers make a smooth transition, while achieving multi-cloud, multi-active architecture and service sustainability; improving data center utilization It refers to the establishment of targeted open source associations and other measures to help enterprises quickly transition to the cloud-native technology architecture and ecosystem and improve DC utilization; strengthening inter-departmental collaboration refers to helping enterprises build observable The platform can effectively improve AIOps automation capabilities on the basis of greatly reducing the failure rate.
Based on a full understanding of the industry, Yunke Tongminghu load balancing products have a clear understanding of future planning. In the practice of subversion and reconstruction of load balancing, we focus on solving the localization problem in the field of application delivery, and create excellent products with high performance, safety and controllability, high performance and scalable design. Help customers complete the replacement with the lowest risk and improve sustainability.
Challenges and Future of Cloud Native
With the development of the digital economy, my country's financial technology is booming and continues to promote digital transformation. The bank's technical architecture system is also gradually evolving towards a more open, stable and sensitive dual-state trend. More links the actual scene to the value network, and empowers business development by being customer-centric.
In recent years, we have seen that the infrastructure of the new generation of financial industry around cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence is gradually being consolidated. The development of cloud-native technology architecture based on technologies such as containers and microservices is on track.
In this online forum, the guests conducted in-depth exchanges on issues such as cloud-native monitoring difficulties, multi-cloud environments, and development trends.
"In order to ensure the stability of the cloud environment, the ability to observe and monitor the cloud environment is very important. What do you think of this?"
Wu Jingtao: " There are currently two mainstream models for observability in the market. The first is the DevOps model dominated by Internet vendors such as Alibaba. It started as early as 2016. The development team is responsible for managing logs in the operating environment through applications. The second is the probe model dominated by APM manufacturers at home and abroad. Data collection and observability are realized by bytecode injection in the code running environment. However , these two models have certain obstacles in the actual operation of the financial system. The use of the application management log in the production center will cause performance degradation, complex operation and maintenance, and difficulties in real-time data interaction with the development center. The APM model will also Bring security risks, performance and reliability degradation and other issues.
In a project I led in 2019, traditional data centers used load balancing products and cloud-native environments to implement data collection and application observability through strategic control points of API Gateway. Its advantage is that it utilizes the existing architecture nodes, without the existence of probes and management logs, and does not affect the operation safety, performance and reliability of any application. The disadvantage is that the granular segment is at the level of application service/API service, and cannot reach the fine-grained level of each line of code. At present, this method has been applied and practiced in many banks, and more than 90% of the bank's application protocols have been analyzed. Considering that code efficiency is the task of development centers and test centers, it is the best path for production centers to adopt probe-free large-grained application observability. "
Bank data centers are relatively complex, such as multi-cloud management, the use of COTS components to build private cloud systems, and a certain degree of vertical integration of cloud products from different vendors. This also poses many challenges from the perspective of cloud operation and maintenance management. Scheduling brings a lot of inconvenience and barriers, which may affect the integrity of cloud services. How do you see this problem?
Wu Jingtao: Active-active and multi-cloud multi-active data centers are implemented at the application level. And cloud native is more realized by using open source and commercial components. Therefore, it poses great challenges to cloud operation and maintenance management:
· The cloud platform can be responsible for its own security, internal scheduling and disaster recovery. However, application security, API security, and cross-region and cross-domain disaster recovery cannot be realized;
· The cloud platform can be responsible for the management of Node/Pod. However, what financial enterprises need is application lifecycle management, and they can only invest their own research and development efforts on the basis of cloud platforms;
· Once the open source components of the cloud platform stop service/supply, code updates stop, and technical services stop, new security holes will appear that cannot be quickly discovered and repaired. Therefore, independent and controllable enterprises are required to provide new code trees, open source and surrounding codes, and provide comprehensive services.
We know that only by developing, deploying, and operating products based on the cloud environment can we export high-quality financial services and play the role of cloud-native value. Please give a technical suggestion from the perspective of overall product development, how to better play the role of cloud native technology architecture?
Wu Jingtao: " Currently, the B/S traditional data of financial enterprises are facing dual challenges at the same time, that is, the challenge of self-control and the evolution of cloud native. There have always been two schools of thought in terms of application sustainability that customers are most concerned about: One is the active-active data center/multi-cloud multi-active architecture. The other is Design for fail, serverless architecture.
In actual use, not every financial company can learn from big banks investing billions to build data centers. It is even more impossible to form a R&D team of 10,000 people. Therefore, it is necessary to reconstruct a stable business with a multi-cloud and multi-active architecture, and integrate mobile banking and other mobile sensitive services with a cloud-native architecture as a new engine for the digital transformation of the financial industry. "
epilogue
Finally, several guests summarized the event. When it comes to "balancing security and development" is an important issue that cloud-native applications need to face for a long time when they are implemented in the financial field, the development of open source software and open source ecology can provide strong support for cloud-native applications and also provide support for the digital transformation of finance. Brand new engine.
In the evolution process of cloud native, the key is application sustainability and application observability. The combination of f5/Yunke/Xinchuang Tongming Lake can help financial enterprises in the evolution process, whether it is the continuity of the multi-cloud and multi-active architecture, or the observability of the probe-free data collection technology.
The innovative achievements of financial science and technology are constantly respected and evolved, and the new technology engine is constantly changing. How to better promote the digital transformation of finance with high quality, improve the modern financial system that adapts to the development of the digital economy, and make financial technology stable and far-reaching. The common mission of high-tech companies. In 2022, Digital China will try new breakthroughs in the cloud-native and digital-native fields, and China Yunke will release the "Yunke Tongming Lake" Xinchuang load balancing series products. In the future, it will combine more advanced artificial intelligence technology and other cutting-edge technologies to provide enterprises with more valuable "productivity tools" and escort the development of information technology application innovation.