NAB and Microsoft form cloud partnership

John Kavanagh

NAB and Microsoft have signed a five-year contract with the aim of co-designing and developing multi-cloud technology for NAB and BNZ.

The planned “multi-cloud ecosystem” will host 1000 of the banks’ application, with Microsoft Azure the primary cloud. The system will be designed so that all applications can run on a secondary cloud.

The bank hopes the move will greater operational resilience, reduce development timelines and lower operating costs.

The bank said multi-cloud avoids concentration risk by allowing the bank to redistribute workloads across cloud providers. This approach addresses the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority’s concern about systems dependence on a single IT provider.

It said the move from private to public cloud would allow it to benefit from innovation in the public cloud and make its systems more scaleable.

NAB group executive technology and enterprise operations, Patrick Wright, said in a statement: “To deliver for customers, we need to invest in the latest technology, leveraging global leaders like Microsoft to help us bring new services to our customers quickly and at scale.”

The bank and the IT company will share development costs.