MANILA — January 24 — IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), a universal bank headquartered in Manila, have just signed a US$260-million, multi-year services agreement. IBM will provide IT infrastructure services to support an agile IT and hybrid cloud, as well as digital development capabilities to accelerate BPI’s digital transformation.
CELEBRATION. BPI President and CEO Cezar Consing and IBM Asia Pacific Chairman and CEO Harriet Green are all smiles as they seal their organizations’ US$260-million partnership with a handshake. Looking on from behind are Ramon Jocson, chief operations officer, BPI Enterprises Services Segment; Pilar Bernadette Maquez, head of BPI IT Services Group; Aileen Judan-Jiao, IBM Philippines president and country general manager; and Peter Campbell, general manager, IBM Asia Pacific Global Business Services Strategic Sales. (Photo source: IBM Philippines)
BPI is the third-largest bank in the Philippines in terms of assets, with more than nine million customers. The bank continually improves the digital banking experience for customers by investing in technology, including this renewed IT services agreement with IBM, across online, mobile apps, ATMs, CAMs (Cash Accept Machines) and branches.
BPI aims to maintain an agile and compliant IT environment to maintain leadership in the Philippine banking industry. To achieve this, BPI will leverage IT infrastructure and hybrid cloud management services from IBM that delivers seamless technology regardless of whether it resides within BPI’s existing infrastructure or its private or public cloud environments. In doing so, IBM will host the bank’s digital solutions of today and in the coming years.
As part of the Digital Experience Solution, IBM and BPI have also designed an IT environment that supports an open API economy strategy that makes the most of the bank’s data to create compelling customer applications and services. The agreement will help to achieve some of the bank’s digital transformation goals which include the continual upgrades for bank branches with new technology as well as other financial services apps for customers.
The services provided by IBM will have “born in the cloud experiences’ at its core to support BPI’s Hybrid Cloud Strategy, including Infrastructure as Code, and an open API consumption. IBM Security services will underpin the success of the IT services strategy designed by IBM for BPI.
“The rapidly changing business environment requires us to accelerate the pace of our digital transformation. We need to continue to be responsive to an ever-changing market,” said Cezar P. Consing, BPI president and CEO. “Our extended agreement with IBM will help us become more agile in introducing innovations and transforming how we do things in BPI.”
“Banks like BPI are going through a major shift and embracing a complete transformation of their business with advanced services to respond to the needs of today’s connected consumer,” said Martin Jetter, senior vice president, IBM Global Technology Services. “We are excited about helping one of the leading banks in South East Asia power its core IT infrastructure and bring new digital experiences with IBM Cloud in a secure and open environment to help prepare BPI for the future of banking.”
IBM scores major deals for its cloud services
Today’s news underscores IBM’s continued leadership and investments in cloud technology and infrastructure services. This news comes on the heels of last week’s major cloud news:
An agreement with France’s largest bank, BNP Paribas, to make IBM its premier cloud provider. This is one of the largest hybrid cloud agreements in Europe, and is critical for the banking industry as more banks look for hybrid and secure ways to adopt cloud.
A $550M cloud services agreement with Vodafone through which IBM will provide managed services to Vodafone Business’ cloud and hosting unit. This partnership has joint business venture element attached to it, meaning that IBM and Vodafone will work together to speed the adoption of cloud technologies and innovative business applications enabled by 5G, Edge and Software Defined Networking for clients across Europe and beyond.
A $325-million agreement with Juniper Networks in which IBM will assist the network technology giant manage multiple cloud environments, including its existing infrastructure to help reduce costs and speed its journey to the cloud.
Shareholders of Red Hat voted to approve the proposed acquisition – bringing it one step closer to an expected close in the second half of 2019 and underscoring the imperative for cloud and open source as a strategic part of today’s business environment.
The reality today is that enterprises are only 20% into their cloud journey, focused on getting the “easy” cloud native workloads up and running. To get through the next 80%, which will be the critical, more complex workloads, they need to be able to seamlessly and securely move and manage data, services and workflows across multiple clouds and existing IT systems. This emerging hybrid multicloud opportunity is estimated to be $1 trillion by 2020, and these recent client deals along with IBM’s plan to acquire Red Hat further positions us as the #1 company to address these opportunities. (IBM)
Source: IBM Philippines