IBM Public Cloud for Financial Services

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The most open and secure public cloud for business

IBM is the leader in Hybrid Cloud for Enterprises. Several large financial institutions such as Westpac, Lloyds, BNP Paribas, Santander and many more across the globe have trusted and chosen IBM for their transformation and journey to the cloud. IBM provides great choice and flexibility to its customers who are taking a systematic approach in migrating existing on-prem workloads to multitenant public cloud environments; but, in the interim, require a solution that can bridge the two worlds.

In context of our recent announcement with Bank of America, we are combining a number of advanced technologies and world-class expertise to address the complex challenges financial institutions face today. The idea is simple yet powerful. Financial institutions need to (a) change their operating model to achieve the desired financial ratios (b) deliver a differentiated, experience-rich digital-first customer experience to attract new and retain existing customers.

The new target operating model for most large and small financial institutions involves exiting their own data centres and move to public cloud for security and to embed the latest technologies. And, delivering a differentiated experience requires the bank to change/ augment their existing product sets to deliver a personalised and value-driven experience typically by bundling of products which requires partnerships and changing/ modernising existing core platforms. Neither of the two are easy to achieve.

This is where IBM Public Cloud for Financial Services comes in. We are building a platform that enables the banks to host their workloads in the public cloud safely, securely with complete DevSecOps automation. And, we are onboarding select software and fintech partners within the same cloud environment to make it easier to integrate and deliver the new consumer experience. IBM will vet and govern the process for partner onboarding and ongoing certification. IBM Promontory (an IBM company) will provide world-class expertise on compliance related matters. This platform offering as a whole delivers the enterprise grade service our customers have come to expect from IBM.

Bank of America will be the first collaborator to use the platform to host key applications and workloads to support the privacy and safety expectations of its 66 million banking customers.

This new offering is game changing for the industry as a whole. The IBM public cloud for financial services is enabling the delivery of a secure and trusted cloud-based platform that is uniquely built for financial services – addressing the niche demands of the industry. At the same time, the service will deliver the scale and economies of public cloud – addressing various financial ratios and bringing a balance.

The possibilities are huge as IBM delivers a platform to organizations or providers—regardless of their size—to join the new financial services-ready public cloud. And any Software-as-a-Service provider who demonstrates conformity to the platform’s regulatory and compliance policies will be eligible to deliver offerings through the platform.

It’s time to engage in a transformation to embrace cloud technologies to speed up innovation and drive costs down.