Westpac New Zealand, part of one of the world’s largest financial services institutions, recently signed a new five-year agreement with IBM (News - Alert).
Under the terms of this partnership, Westpac New Zealand will use IBM’s private cloud technology, in order to become New Zealand’s major digital bank. The firm will transfer some of its business critical IT systems into IBM’s state-of-the-art Auckland data center, to enable enhanced customer service.
Westpac has around 4,700 employees who look after 1.27 million customers. This new agreement with IBM will fully support Westpac as it is undergoing significant transformation from a traditional bank to one that uses cloud computing.
Officials said that Westpac will adopt IBM private cloud capabilities to develop and test tools within a dedicated environment. By doing this, it will be able to deploy new online and mobile banking services faster and across multiple devices and platforms in response to customer demand.
IBM will also help Westpac respond to customers with enhanced online security features, such as the ability to manage identity and access through a single user ID.
Westpac’s Interim Chief Information Officer Jason Millett said: “IBM’s private cloud platform would further enable increased development of Westpac’s digital capabilities as it responds to customer demands for a more personalized, convenient way of banking.”
The IBM platform offers a robust and advanced infrastructure that enables a seamless online banking experience across multiple devices. This particular feature will help support Westpac’s goal of being New Zealand’s leading digital bank.
Additionally, Westpac will also optimize its IT infrastructure by renewing IBM mainframe services, midrange and storage platforms and migrating some services to IBM’s Level 3 data center providing even greater data resiliency.
Rob Lee, managing director for IBM New Zealand, said: “Our relationship with Westpac New Zealand is one of our longest and closest, marked by a high degree of innovation and collaboration. We continue to invest in skills and advanced technologies including our cloud solutions to help deliver on their vision to be New Zealand’s leading digital bank.”