HSBC partners with Oracle to boost digital transformation

By Gloria Methri

HSBC, Europe’s largest lender, has joined forces with US tech firm Oracle, to boost the bank’s digital offerings and accelerate its digital transformation journey.

Under the multi-year agreement, the multinational bank will upgrade and migrate select database systems to Exadata cloud@customer, Oracle’s cloud platform.

The cloud platform will be delivered as a managed infrastructure service in HSBC’s own data centres and its deployment will help scale the bank’s mission-critical systems and services.

“Our strategy is to digitise the bank at scale, so that we can innovate faster for customers, and our collaboration with Oracle is important in advancing this transformation agenda,” said Frank McGrath, Chief Technology Officer, HSBC.

“We chose Exadata Cloud@Customer primarily for its ability to offer well known databases, with the benefit of a database-as-a-service platform, giving us the performance and operational agility, we need as we continue to grow and diversify our business,” McGrath added.

Exadata Cloud@Customer will enable HSBC to continue to use Oracle databases in support of its critical systems while retaining control of its data governance, thereby meeting data locality and security regulations.

The cloud platform will also enable HSBC to more easily bring cloud automation to manage legacy applications, and easily scale services according to customer and local market demands.

“We are working closely with HSBC to achieve this balance, enabling it to consolidate critical systems on a secure, scalable on-premises cloud platform and develop cloud-based services faster,” said Garrett Ilg, President Japan and Asia Pacific, Oracle.

Last November, HSBC partnered with the Abu Dhabi Global Market Digital Lab, a platform for financial institutions and FinTech firms, to test and develop solutions for the financial services sector.

Oracle, a Texas-based software major, currently has 40 cloud regions globally, with three in the Middle East, and the latest one opened in Abu Dhabi last November.