Why Africa’s Largest Bank Chose Amazon To Become Continent’s ‘First Bank In The Cloud’

In a strategic coup for Amazon, Standard Bank, the biggest financial group in Africa, is shifting onto Amazon Web Services, in the same month its main 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 migrate its production workloads, customer-facing platforms and “strategic core banking applications” to the cloud. The move has by the South African Reserve Bank, the banking authority.

Story from Forbes. Story by Toby Shapshak.

“For Standard Bank Group to remain a leader in services, we recognize we need to adopt a cloud-first 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.”

He says the move will allow the bank to “build services organization of the future and to be positioned than a bank” using AWS’s agility and security combined with Standard Bank’s “customer obsession.”

Jassy said: “the cloud is transforming the financial as organizations look for new ways to enhance , and power their entire enterprise operations and effectively on the world’s leading cloud.”

Read more at Forbes.