Standard Bank shifts SAP core system to Microsoft Azure cloud

Written by Alex Hamilton
5th March 2020

Standard Bank is shifting its SAP core banking system onto the Microsoft Azure cloud in a move it hopes will improve both customer experience and development time for new products.

Standard Bank’s “Project Embrace” is all about cloud migration

Sabelo Nkwanyana, Standard Bank chief information officer for personal and business banking in South Africa, says that the bank’s continuing partnership with SAP enables it to focus on innovation, “by leveraging the respective skills of SAP and Microsoft to transform the digitisation and personalisation journey for our customers.”

SAP partnered with Microsoft in October 2019, in a deal designed to kicks off a migration of SAP S/4HANA customers from an on-premises model to the cloud.

The deal is part of “Project Embrace”, the South African bank’s planned collaboration with public cloud providers including Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Google.

Lillian Barnard, managing director for Microsoft South Africa, says that the work Microsoft is doing with Standard Bank is the first local demonstration of this partnership.

She adds that it is “another milestone in the journey Microsoft is on with Standard Bank, to bring innovation into every aspect of the bank’s IT system and enable enriched interactions with the bank’s customers.”

Both firms claim that the project will deliver “a unified approach” to how Standard Bank runs SAP S/4HANA in Microsoft Azure. The bank aims to deliver a faster time-to-market on products and services “while ensuring its IT infrastructure is optimised.”

By moving workloads to the cloud, Microsoft says Standard Bank will be able to access a range of features that it can “deploy instantly” and scale according to demand.

Cathy Smith, managing director at SAP Africa, says that the move will “empower the bank to create new business models and deliver more personalised outcomes in today’s dynamic business environment.”