ANZ bank and IBM have signed a five year, $450 million agreement which includes access to the vendor’s software portfolio, innovation lab, cloud development and systems infrastructure.
According to IBM, the agreement will provide common platforms across ANZ’s network as it continues to grow into a super-regional bank.
The innovation lab uses a cloud development platform-as-a-service called Bluemix. This means the bank’s developers can build, test and deploy new applications and services.
In addition, the vendor will deploy a z13 mainframe and POWER8 infrastructure as part of ANZ’s private cloud environment. This will provide the bank with security and resiliency to service the needs of mobile customers across the bank’s network.
The bank also plans to use the vendor’s integration, content management, data, analytics and cloud software to support its core banking and infrastructure needs,
According to ANZ CIO Scott Collary, understanding its customers’ needs and preferences around mobile and digital banking is critical.
“We need to ensure we’re meeting these needs in an innovative, consistent and seamless way and with this partnership with IBM, we’re working to achieve this goal,” he said.
IBM has been a partner of ANZ for over 40 years.
In August, ANZ created an International Technology and Digital Business Advisory Panel.
The panel will offer advice to the bank's board on digital business and emerging technologies.
In May, the bank announced that it had retired more than 5000 business applications during the financial half year as part of its IT infrastructure modernisation.
The bank announced statutory after tax of $3.5 billion for the half, up 3 per cent compared to 1H14, and a cash profit of $3.7 billion, up 5 per cent.
The bank continued to invest in digital in the half, ANZ CEO Mike Smith said.
Read more: ANZ creates tech advisory panel
"In Australia digital now accounts for almost three quarters of all transactions and digital sales are up 52 per cent.," he said at the time.
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