Sberbank takes to the cloud
Sberbank and I-Teco, a Russian system integrator, have signed an agreement on the development of a joint cloud platform, SberCloud.
SberCloud has lift off
The company will offer cloud solutions to both Sberbank and its partners, as well as external customers. Sberbank says it holds 60% in the joint venture.
Herman Gref, CEO and chairman of the executive board of Sberbank, says: “This will enable us to offer a powerful, reliable and protected technological platform for business development.”
The investment will let Sberbank enter the “rapidly growing cloud infrastructure market”, which is in “high demand among both start-ups and larger companies”.
Marketplaces are all the rage in fintech at the moment, and the bank says a cloud solutions marketplace will be created to serve its corporate clients ranging from SMEs to large corporations.
According to Sberbank, this marketplace will let businesses move away from purchasing own servers, while applying necessary capacities.
If you want more proof, the bank cites Forrester Research Russia, which reveals that the volume of the global cloud technologies market was $112 billion in 2016. Experts anticipate that the market will grow ten to 15 times in the next five to seven years.
Now you’re talking
Along with the cloud news, Sberbank has acquired a majority stake in Dialog, an enterprise corporate messenger developer. Financial details were not disclosed.
Sberbank’s investment will be targeted at “further technological solutions and strengthening user security from cyber threats”.
Via Dialog’s messenger, companies can transfer employee communications onto a platform with a “user-friendly” interface.
This includes voice and video calls, chat bot compatibility, file exchange, meeting set up, and audio and video conferencing. The product is designed to replace external messengers in corporate communications.
Lev Khasis, Sberbank’s first deputy chairman of the executive board, says it plans to start using Dialog enterprise for intrabank communications this year, “but we also hope that our partners and clients show interest toward the product”.
Dialog has been working on enterprise corporate messenger development since 2016. The firm has offices in Moscow, St Petersburg and Riga (Latvia).
Back in February, we did a case study on Sberbank. At that time, it said it benchmarks its performance against technology companies not other banks.
