SOUTH AFRICA – African financial service provider Nedbank has partnered with Microsoft to migrate components of its IT infrastructure to the cloud.
The investment through the partnership will make Nedbank the first financial institution in the country to run operations of this scale in the cloud as it aimed to become a “digital-first financial services provider”.
The partnership forms part of Nedbank’s 2020 digital transformation vision and three-lane digital strategy, which focuses on running the business (digitise), transforming the business (delight) and disrupting the business (disrupt) as well as better serving the bank’s diverse client base, the bank says.
“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.
Microsoft SA managing director, Lillian Barnard said; “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. Microsoft is extremely proud of our ongoing partnership with Nedbank in their digital transformation journey.”
“Moving these components of the bank’s IT infrastructure to Microsoft’s cloud represents a critical next step in that journey, and we are excited to see how this will add value in driving Nedbank’s ambitious growth strategy.” She added.
“Banks have an intelligent role to play in advising their clients how to optimise their finances, and digital transformation can help achieve this by creating operational efficiencies and enabling agility and flexibility to deliver cutting-edge solutions and client-centric banking. Microsoft values being able to partner with a forward-looking financial services provider like Nedbank to drive this change,” concludes Barnard.
“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.
Nedbank will utilise all three of Microsofts’ clouds – the Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics 365. It has not disclosed the value of the deal.
