Santander Inks £700m Cloud and Digital Transformation Deal with IBM

The bank has signed a 5-year deal with IBM that will see it make use of technologies including big data, blockchain and IBM’s Watson AI to transform its services. As an example, via IBM Watson, Santander is incorporating AI capabilities to “improve customer experience, enhance branch advisors expertise and increase employee productivity”. David Chaos, Santander global CIO, was quoted as saying: “IBM’s technology will provide the bank with the flexibility needed to support the constantly evolving business of a bank.” Key to the deal is also the provision of cloud services, as Santander moves towards a “hybrid, multicloud infrastructure”. To implement this, the bank created its own Cloud Competence Centre. IBM is collaborating with this in terms of methodologies and processes. Santander will also use a range of technologies provided by the US computing giant, including IBM DevOps solutions and IBM API Connect, to help develop and launch new or upgraded applications and digital services. Along will all that, IBM Security tools will be used in areas like mobile applications and incident response.