UniCredit to form joint venture with IBM for cloud services
Milan-based UniCredit will offer IT services to other FIs
UniCredit and IBM are to form a joint venture company that will offer IT infrastructure services to other financial institutions.
The move is part of a “multi-billion dollar”, 10-year agreement to transform the IT infrastructure that supports all of the Italian banking group’s commercial and private banking activities in Europe using cloud technologies.
The agreement will include the creation of a joint venture between UniCredit Business Integrated Solutions – the bank’s global service company – and IBM, which will have employees from both companies in Italy, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic .
IBM and UniCredit will establish a Value Creation Centre that will “aim to harness innovation to provide superior service and drive success for clients on a continuous basis”. The Centre will monitor trends in the banking and IT industries and “identify emerging disruptive technologies to be rapidly introduced into UniCredit’s infrastructure”, an IBM statement said.
The bank will use cloud-based analytics to “better predict and understand trading in financial markets, manage spending and provide the most innovative customer solutions”.
Erich Clementi, senior vice president, IBM Global Technology Services, said: “UniCredit’s innovation-driven approach to sourcing reflects changing motivations in the strategic sourcing marketplace. When making sourcing decisions, forward thinking organisations like UniCredit are moving beyond basic needs like cost-cutting to higher-order business outcomes such as growth, competitive advantage and, of course, innovation.”
