Santander has so far moved 80% of IT infrastructure to cloud
Spanish banking giant Santander continues its journey into the cloud as it strives to be cloud native
Santander has migrated 80% of its IT infrastructure to the cloud, using in-house-developed software, as it aims to become cloud-native.
The past 12 months have seen significant progress in the Spanish bank’s migration to the cloud. Just over a year ago, the bank had 60% of its IT infrastructure in the cloud, and set 2023 as the target to have 100% of its infrastructure cloud-based. At the time, it said it had been moving 200 servers to the cloud every working day.
Using its own software, known as Gravity, the bank is moving systems to a cloud platform built using in-house resources and third-party providers.
“Gravity will help transform Santander into a digital-native company, with the agility and capabilities to offer the best customer experience, while continuing to provide the solid security for data and assets we’ve always delivered our customers,” said Dirk Marzluf, chief operating and technology officer at Banco Santander.
The bank said the move to cloud will “allow easier and faster access to data, more simplicity and faster time-to-market, making it possible to deliver new capabilities in hours, instead of days, and more frequent app updates”.
It said the bank will also be able to use real-time analytics to provide better products and services, while the high cost of running the core banking platform system will be reduced, including a 70% reduction in energy costs.
Santander said it expects to have finished the transition to the cloud in all its core markets and businesses in two to three years.
Read more about financial services and cloud
- The financial services community has gone from being one of the least likely sectors to adopt cloud to becoming one of its keenest users, as regulator attitudes to using the technology have become more accommodating.
- Goldman Sachs is considering converting its cloud investments into a non-financial services product line by creating a cloud-based core technology platform that could be sold as a service to other financial services companies.
- Nationwide Building Society is in the throes of a cloud and DevOps-focused effort to replatform its digital banking and mortgage services.
The cloud platform gives Santander’s 16,500 software developers and engineers a modern environment to build customer-centric applications, which it said will also make the bank a more attractive place to work for IT professionals.
Big banks have had to adopt cloud strategies quickly in the face of heightened competition from challenger banks, often offering cloud-native services. As a result, there has been a boom in contracts with cloud suppliers in the financial services sector.
For example, Deutsche Bank committed to an in-house digital transformation with Google Cloud, and is collaborating with the supplier on bringing new customer-facing services to market.
In the UK, Lloyds Banking Group signed a five-year collaboration deal with Google Cloud in a bid to drive forward software engineering and boost its digital transformation strategy.
Meanwhile, Standard Chartered Bank has deepened its ties with Amazon Web Services by signing a global, five-year deal that will see it migrate its core banking systems and customer-facing applications to the public cloud giant’s infrastructure.
