Temenos, a developer headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland with a global reach, apparently is the first vendor to host core banking applications in the Microsoft Windows Azure cloud platform. What’s more, Temenos is undertaking its first-ever cloud migration projects as it moves 12 Mexican financial institutions to the cloud-hosted TEMENOS 24 (T24) platform.

The apparent benefit to banks and financial institutions, according to the press release, is that now Temenos can charge per-use, rather than forcing customers to deploy the retail banking solution in costly data centers. And since the legacy version of T24 already provided customers with multiple applications in a combined suite, Temenos says shifting the suite to the cloud didn’t require much work. But it did require SQL Azure running in the backend.

Five of those 12 networked Mexican banks- – Sofol Tepeyac, Grupo Agrifin, Findeca, Soficam and C.Capital Global — are undergoing the first stages of their Temenos-assisted cloud leap now, with the finish line set for Q2 2011. The remaining seven institutions will be following suit “later in 2011.”

No sooner does TalkinCloud discuss ways for Microsoft to boost their Azure ISV partner base and further their cloud master plan than Temenos signs up. And if Windows Azure  does lead Temenos to a lucrative side business in cloud migrations, well, TalkinCloud will be watching.

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