Bank of Queensland's cloud plans take on Azure hue

The Bank of Queensland has announced the next phase of its digital transformation, appointing Microsoft as its preferred cloud provider in a five-year strategic partnership.

In July, the bank announced plans to “exit its traditional data centres” to become a cloud-only operation.

The plan, according to CEO George Frazis, is to become a “single, cloud-based, digital retail bank”.

In its deal with Microsoft, the bank will be “progressively transitioning its technology infrastructure and applications to Microsoft Azure by 2025”, Microsoft said in a statement.

BoQ expects the move to drive efficiencies, enable further automation, and improve the time-to-market for new features.

The migration involves moving six data centres to Azure by 2025, which is also expected to improve “security and risk controls” and help the bank reduce its carbon footprint.

The bank will also become the first Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services customer in A/NZ, with the two companies testing and co-designing products for that market.

Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services is designed to create “a single 360-degree customer view” across BoQ’s various brands.

Microsoft will provide a team of global and regional executives with engineering teams in Australia and the US to support the bank’s digital transformation.

BoQ has been working with Microsoft since the bank deployed Dynamics 365, and in that year the vendor also supported BoQ’s Banker X program.

Under Banker X, BoQ rolled out Office 365 to its staff, along with devices like Microsoft Surface to support hybrid working.