Nedbank moves its IT into the cloud with Microsoft deal

Nedbank has partnered with Microsoft to migrate components of its IT infrastructure into the cloud, the financial services company said on Monday.

The move forms part of the bank’s digital transformation project. The project focuses on running the business (“digitise”), transforming it (“delight”) and disrupting it (“disrupt”) as well as better serving its client base, it said in a statement.

“Nedbank selected Microsoft as its digital transformation partner because of the culture fit and alignment between the two companies as well as Microsoft’s proven ability to effectively manage large organisations’ needs in the cloud,” said Nedbank chief information officer Fred Swanepoel.

“Transformation is a complex journey, so it is critical to choose partners with a cultural fit, which Nedbank and Microsoft enjoy. It’s also important to partner with someone you can trust to not only protect your data and its privacy but to deliver the world-class service you require. Nedbank believes that financial services providers that get digital right will be more successful at traversing an uncertain future.”

Nedbank uses Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics 365, which include layers of security and data residency to ensure compliance with local regulations.

“The move to the cloud is a key step in Nedbank’s digital transformation journey to modernise the bank by upgrading legacy infrastructure so it can ultimately become a disruptor in financial services through faster-to-market, best-in-class products and services,” the bank said. It has not disclosed the value of the deal.

Standard Bank

In April, Nedbank rival Standard Bank announced a similar deal with Microsoft to help transform its technology estate and internal corporate functions. That came weeks after Standard Bank said it had signed a comprehensive cloud computing deal with Amazon Web Services.

The move would help Standard Bank accelerate its digital transformation journey and significantly improve employee experience, it said in a statement at the time.

“The partnership will see Microsoft providing cloud services for Standard Bank’s internal corporate functions such as treasury, finance, employee productivity and human resources. This forms part of Standard Bank’s multi-cloud approach and strengthens its long-term relationship with Microsoft,” it said.

Standard Bank said in March that it had selected AWS as its preferred cloud provider as its shifted various production workloads, including its customer-facing platforms, to the cloud. The banking group would also move “strategic core banking applications” to the cloud.

It would “leverage AWS services, including data analytics and machine learning, to automate financial operations and enhance customer-facing Web and mobile applications”.

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced the launch of two new enterprise-grade data centres in South Africa. Amazon plans to open a local AWS data centre in 2020.  — © 2019 NewsCentral Media