In a strategic coup for Amazon, Standard Bank, the biggest financial group in Africa, is shifting its operations onto Amazon Web Services, in the same month its main cloud rival Microsoft launched its first new data centers on the continent.
It will “become Africa’s first bank in the cloud,” says AWS CEO Andy Jassy.
Based in South Africa, the 156-year old Standard Bank says it will migrate its production workloads, customer-facing platforms and “strategic core banking applications” to the cloud. The move has been approved by the South African Reserve Bank, the banking authority.
“For Standard Bank Group to remain a leader in African financial services, we recognize we need to adopt a cloud-first approach to our business,” said Group CEO Sim Tshabalala. “AWS Cloud technology will create a springboard for Standard Bank Group, helping us to rapidly roll out our digitization and data strategy to better cater to customers whose needs are constantly evolving.”
Photo: Associated Press
He says the move will allow the bank to “build Africa’s financial services organization of the future and to be positioned as more than a bank” using AWS’s agility and security combined with Standard Bank’s “customer obsession.”
Jassy said: “the cloud is transforming the financial services industry as organizations look for new ways to enhance customer experiences, and power their entire enterprise operations more efficiently and effectively on the world’s leading cloud.”
