Financial Services Institutions (FSIs) face challenges with fragmented tools, high costs, and security alerts, which hinder their cloud strategy optimization. At the Elastic Financial Services Summit, experts emphasized the need for FSIs to unify data and integrate intelligent, cloud-optimized data architectures to tackle these issues. Despite the explosion of digital signals and a global shortage of cybersecurity professionals, many executives are dissatisfied with cloud outcomes and cost reductions. The path forward involves breaking down operational silos while maintaining data control, as highlighted by integration difficulties across legacy systems and privacy concerns. Goldman Sachs exemplifies successful data management using Elastic's tools, achieving scalable, efficient operations across hybrid environments. Elastic offers innovative solutions like searchable snapshots and AI-driven capabilities to reduce cloud costs and enhance data accessibility, ensuring that data remains fully searchable while optimizing storage efficiency.