Anthony Amicangioli is the founder and CEO of HPR.

How should the new year be known?

This year will be the year that the cloud goes mainstream in financial services. Although businesses leveraging cloud-based models have upended incumbents in scores of other industries, it’s been slower coming in financial services.

There are several understandable reasons for that – security concerns, compliance questions, a general mindset that prized keeping things in-house, etc. – but those concerns and objections have all been overcome, in our opinion.

The cost, simplicity and usability benefits of the cloud are just too hard to ignore. In recent conversations with a significant buy-side firm, its CTO said they have gone from a situation a few years ago where they had to argue why they should use the cloud for specific projects, to now having to make a case for why they shouldn’t. That’s a massive change in only a few years, and I think it is indicative of the mindset we see with most of the firms with which we speak.