BNP Paribas is to become an anchor client in the EU for IBM's Cloud for Financial Services framework, developed in collaboration with Bank of America to drive financial-grade security and compliance controls in public cloud infrastructures.
BNP Paribas will join a growing ecosystem of financial institutions and more than 30 new technology providers adopting IBM Cloud for Financial Services.
The news comes as Big Blue unveils a Policy Framework for Financial Services operating in the cloud and and an advisory council to guide the ongoing effort.
Chief technology officer Tony Kerrison will represent Bank of America on the Council, which will be led by Howard Boville, SVP, IBM Cloud. The Council will be focused on bringing major financial institutions together to help drive the evolution of cloud security in the highly regulated financial sector.
"We have had great success with our proprietary, private cloud, that currently houses the majority of our technology workloads," says David Reilly, Bank of America's global banking & markets, enterprise risk & finance technology and core technology infrastructure executive. "At the same time, we have been looking to identify a financial services-ready solution that offers the same level of security and economics as our private cloud with enhanced scalability. That's why we're partnering with IBM to create an industry-first, third party cloud that puts data resiliency, privacy and customer information safety needs at the forefront of decision making."
As its first client in Europe, BNP Paribas will utilise a dedicated cloud, developed and managed by IBM, that will leverage IBM public cloud technologies, including Keep Your Own Key (KYOK) encryption capabilities to ensure GDPR compliance.
Bernard Gavgani, CIO, BNP Paribas, says: "IBM Cloud for Financial Services helps us to further our transformation journey to the cloud and migrate mission critical workloads with confidence knowing that we can meet the regulatory standards established for the industry."
Additionally, MUFG Bank plans to explore the deployment of IBM Cloud for Financial Services in Japan, with the aim of deepening security and mitigating operational risks as it shifts more of its IT workload to the cloud.
IBM has also expanded its growing ecosystem of Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to include more than 30 partners, who will work alongside banks to explore new possibilities in the cloud via a newly-created IBM Research Cloud Innovation Lab, planned for August, 2020.