Cloud computing has become a fixture of the financial markets operating model, but according to LSEG Data & Analytics, simply being in the cloud is no longer enough to stand out.

Institutions have spent years moving applications, analytics and datasets into cloud environments to gain scale, flexibility and efficiency. The more pressing question now, LSEG Data & Analytics argues, is whether those cloud-native market data architectures can actually support faster decisions, larger datasets, AI-enabled workflows, governance and resilience.

That distinction carries particular weight in market data. Trusted pricing and reference data underpin trading, portfolio management, risk, compliance, operations and reporting. Moving that data to the cloud changes where it lives, but not necessarily how it is consumed, governed or put to work. Firms that continue to depend on duplicated storage, repeated data movement and manual staging may find their operating models just as complex after migration as before.

LSEG Data & Analytics describes the first phase of cloud transformation as one focused on access and migration. Firms shifted workloads away from on-premises infrastructure and gained optionality. Yet once cloud became mainstream, cloud availability stopped being a meaningful differentiator. Buyers are now asking tougher questions: can data be used natively where teams work, can it support analytics, automation and AI, can it be governed from the outset, and can it reduce operational friction rather than simply relocate it?

Traditional file-based delivery is a key pain point. Data is often downloaded, staged, transformed, reconciled and maintained across duplicated infrastructure before it becomes usable, with each step adding delay, overhead and control requirements.

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