In 2018 we launched Finance Forward 365, our cloud-focused technology stack built on the Microsoft cloud platform, configured, enhanced and secured specifically for the needs of the financial services sector. In 2023 we completed the journey to migrate all of our clients to the cloud.
In 2024 we will release the new version of our Finance Forward 365 platform. This is an exciting step for us to deliver a brand new set of capabilities and enhancements to our client’s technology, ensuring they are getting the very best out of what the cloud has to offer. This also represents a shift in the way we think about technology change from the traditional, data centre days, whereby new technology delivery was over multi-year periods, to a brand new way and vision to deliver technology more quickly and effectively to our clients.
Three key influences on developing platform
We have three critical influences on how we look to develop our Finance Forward 365 platform.
- The first and most important is what our clients need from their technology to meet their goals. The technology must facilitate the business doing what it needs to do day-to-day effectively and reliably whilst also enabling the business to achieve what it wants to do in the future, without being a barrier.
- Our second big influence is the changes vendors make to their cloud products, specifically Microsoft. We invest a lot of time assessing and analysing all of the many and frequent changes that Microsoft plans to its products to ensure we can deliver new functionality and changes to our client’s technology in a measured way.
- The final influence is ourselves. We are always learning different ways to deploy, configure and maintain cloud technologies and over time as the technology changes and our experience builds, we come up with different ways to deliver a more reliable, secure and more productive technology platform to our clients.
Finance Forward 365 2024 highlights
More secure
Built on an already strong foundation, we are bringing brand new security capabilities to the platform, some that did not even exist 6 months ago, addressing the ever-changing cyber threat landscape to improve the security posture of our clients’ environments. Some of the highlights are:
- Additional ransomware protections
- High-frequency software patching and hot patching capabilities
- Enhancements to security controls and security oversight
More reliable
One big user-facing change is the update of the Windows operating system to 23H2, the latest Windows OS. We have not only customised the standard operating system to make the switch from Windows 10 easier, but we have also been able to simplify back-end cloud infrastructure to make the desktop more reliable and more performant without needing to change any hardware.
Faster than ever
The biggest change for us is the way Lanware deploys and configures the technology. Our deployment method will mostly be defined as code, greatly reducing the time it takes for us to deliver new technology and changes now and in the future.
More innovative
These latest innovations also put our clients in a strong position to take advantage of the latest Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, such as Microsoft CoPilot, whilst remaining secure and compliant.
Step into the future
We’re really excited about what the future holds with cloud technology and delivering on the promises of cloud to be able to deliver these more quickly. This is just the start of our new journey to continually bring the latest and greatest technology available to our clients.
More secure, more reliable, more innovative and faster than ever. With the latest cloud technology and the 2024 release of Finance Forward 365, we’re excited about what the future holds for our financial services customers and the technology now available to them.
