Sberbank is to enter the cloud infrastructure market through a joint venture with Russian IT house I-Teco.
Sberbank is taking a 60% stake in the venture, which will build a private cloud platform for the bank dubbed SberCloud and market the service to partners and external customers.
According to Forrester Research Russia, the volume of the global cloud technologies market was $112 billion in 2016. Experts anticipate that the market will grow 10-15 times in the next five-to-seven years.
Sberbank is hoping to tap demand for cheaper, on-demand computing power from startups and larger corporates handling exponential growth in data volumes as more services move to digital platforms.
"To build a cloud platform, we are using the best technology available in Russia and the most competent team," says Sberbank chief Herman Gref. "This will enable us to offer a powerful, reliable and protected technological platform for business development."
He says the bank will create a "cloud solutions marketplace" offering both SberCloud and third party cloud services tailored to meet the needs of the bank’s corporate clients ranging from SMEs to large corporations.