The financial services industry is experiencing increasing service disruptions due to cloud migration challenges, with 53% of companies reporting weekly outages. To address this, Bank Automation News hosted a webinar on "Best practices in cloud migration for financial services" featuring panelists from Cockroach Labs and Google Cloud, among others. The discussion centered around the benefits of cloud migration, including increased velocity and scalability, as well as ensuring data safety and compliance across multiple clouds. The panel emphasized the importance of database modernization, with CockroachDB being highlighted as a geo-aware relational database that can facilitate AI innovation in public clouds for key financial use cases such as fraud detection. With regulatory concerns like DORA regulations now in effect throughout Europe, financial institutions must navigate data safety issues while supporting compliance and high availability of data. The panelists agreed that modernizing the database is crucial to making maximum use of AI technologies.