EY and IBM announce the creation of Center of Excellence to help accelerate digital transformation for financial services institutions

-- Combines IBM open hybrid cloud technologies with EY financial services experience to drive cloud adoption for financial institutions

-- Available on IBM Cloud for Financial Services and built with Red Hat OpenShift

LONDON, May 11, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- EY and IBM today announce a Center of Excellence to help financial institutions accelerate digital transformation with hybrid cloud solutions. The Center of Excellence is a centralized virtual hub with offerings in areas like regulatory compliance, digital trust and security to help clients leverage the cloud at scale. Available on IBM Cloud for Financial Services and built with Red Hat OpenShift, the hybrid cloud solutions leverage IBM technology and EY teams' experience working with financial institutions executing business transformation, cloud migration, risk management and compliance to drive digital transformation and accelerate cloud adoption, including through the EY Cloud Enablement Center.

The majority of banking and financial services organizations have yet to deploy core systems to the cloud due to significant complexity and concerns over security, risk, governance and control. In fact, according to a 2020 IBM banking on open hybrid multicloud survey, while 91% of financial institutions are actively using cloud services today or plan to in the next nine months, on average only 9% of their mission-critical regulated banking workloads have shifted to a public cloud environment. To meet today's evolving business requirements and drive innovation, financial institutions recognize the need to accelerate this transition but a majority haven't started this process.

EY and IBM have already launched seven hybrid cloud solutions including multi-hybrid cloud management, application modernization, cloud security and cloud risk management. These offerings are designed to address the specific and evolving needs and requirements of financial services organizations to support their transitions to the cloud. As a result, financial institutions may be better able to transform their business processes and services to focus on customer centricity, cost reduction and resilience, as well as remain competitive in the digital age.

Peter Davis, EY Americas Financial Services Markets & Solutions Leader, says:

"Working closely with IBM to create a hybrid cloud strategy is at the center of the EY-IBM Alliance to drive significant value to financial services clients. As EY clients modernize their infrastructure, the Center of Excellence will focus on driving business value and helping them recognize the benefits of a secured and reliable hybrid cloud approach."

Specifically, EY and IBM hybrid cloud offerings provide financial services clients with the following:

• Mission-critical workload modernization: EY teams' experience in leading technology and business transformations with IBM's open hybrid cloud capabilities that are designed to accelerate digital enablement and performance of core systems
• Technology risk and compliance focused solutions: Solutions are enabled through the IBM Cloud and Security Compliance Center, in collaboration with EY Financial Services regulatory cloud and technology risk frameworks to help mitigate risk
• Security solutions: Solutions combine IBM Cloud Pak for Security and the EY organization's security service capabilities that are customized for financial services enterprises
• Multi/hybrid cloud solutions: Solutions that combine the strength of the EY organization's experience in multi/hybrid cloud solutions, supported by Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud to drive digital transformation

IBM Cloud for Financial Services offers a highly secure environment for financial services institutions to transact with their technology partners. By onboarding to the IBM Cloud for Financial Services, which supports VMware workloads, Red Hat OpenShift and other cloud-native services, clients can adopt EY and IBM's open hybrid cloud solutions, knowing the tools are designed to address regulatory and compliance standards.

Howard Boville, Head of IBM Hybrid Cloud Platform, says:

"Industry-specific cloud offerings are essential to increasing cloud adoption in highly regulated industries such as financial services. With IBM Cloud for Financial Services, we're providing a platform designed with built-in security and compliance features, and are accelerating innovation by collaborating with leaders like EY. As part of the Center for Excellence, we're helping financial institutions modernize their systems by integrating EY industry and regulatory experience with IBM's open hybrid cloud and cognitive technologies, to ultimately fuel customer digital transformation."

This is the latest collaboration as part of the expanded EY-IBM Alliance announced in July 2020 and follows the recent launch of IBM TechHub@EY, to strengthen EY teams' capabilities in IBM hybrid cloud technologies to help organizations accelerate their digital transformation.

Joanna Hardy
EY Global Media Relations
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Lowell Eschen
IBM Communications
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