Alice Chambers |
Microsoft and investment banking company UBS have expanded their partnership to accelerate UBS’s public cloud footprint with Microsoft Azure and improve digital experiences for clients and employees.
UBS plans to have more than 50 per cent of its applications to the cloud, which will also help to advance its sustainability initiatives by maintaining standards for compliance and security.
“Our cloud strategy has fundamentally changed the way we operate, allowing us to reinvigorate our technology estate and reimagine how we build applications for our clients,” said Mike Dargan, chief digital and information officer at UBS Group. “Closely partnering and collaborating with Microsoft has and will continue to create tremendous value for our clients, our employees, the firm and our shareholders. The developments and learnings that stem from this partnership will benefit the financial services industry and beyond.”
UBS first announced its cloud strategy with Microsoft in 2018 and planned to move one third of its applications to public cloud within four years but accomplished this goal early in February 2021. By moving its workloads from on-premises and private cloud servers to Azure, UBS has reduced the energy consumption of its workloads by 30 per cent.
“UBS is a forward-thinking leader in the financial services industry, and Microsoft has been fortunate to co-develop innovative applications that meet complex, regulatory requirements with their engineering teams over the past several years,” said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of cloud and AI at Microsoft. “Our expanded partnership will continue to accelerate the organisation’s ambitious digital transformation plans, applying the power of the Microsoft Cloud to equip UBS with the agility and reliability to deliver for their clients.”
In addition, Microsoft has helped UBS to develop a Carbon Aware API, an open-source solution that provides recommendations on how to schedule workloads that require heavy compute power during times when renewable or low-carbon sources of electricity are most available.
The partnership will also explore how to use artificial intelligence and data to enhance the bank’s services for clients and employees.