National Australia Bank (NAB) has added Google Cloud to its cloud technology strategy that already includes Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. NAB aims to move 35 per cent of its applications to the cloud by the end of 2020.

NAB Chief Technology and Operations Officer Patrick Wright said Google Cloud brought great capabilities and innovations, particularly in data analytics, machine learning and container management, as well as an alignment with the bank’s multi-cloud strategy.

“Our customers are asking us to better understand their needs and to meet those expectations far more efficiently than we’ve been able to previously,” Mr Wright said.

“Investment in data is a critical element of our digital transformation – to be able to use data to develop products and services to improve customer experiences and be able to anticipate their needs.

“One of the benefits of a multi-cloud approach is the ability to move workloads across platforms and integrate different tools and capabilities. We’re designing our most critical applications to be portable between cloud partners to avoid concentration risk which is an important regulatory and risk consideration.

“We also want to tap into the advanced capabilities of the world’s best cloud providers to improve customer experience. Google’s history of embracing open source technology enhances our ability to orchestrate infrastructure effectively across multi-cloud environments, and their software-based platform, Anthos, is a unique solution that we’ll explore further over time.”
NAB has added GCP training modules into the NAB Cloud and Analytics Guild education program, and will integrate GCP capabilities into the NAB Discovery Cloud and Data Hub in the future.

Since embarking on its cloud strategy, the bank has now moved more than 400 applications to the cloud, while also reducing its overall number of applications by eight per cent.