Nationwide Building Society partners with HPE for HPE GreenLake hybrid cloud solution to enhance operational resilience, streamline IT infrastructure.
Financial institutions worldwide are grappling with the challenge of modernising their IT infrastructure to meet evolving customer expectations and regulatory requirements.
The banking sector, in particular, has been at the head of digital transformation efforts, seeking to balance the need for innovation with the imperative of maintaining robust security and compliance measures.
Against this backdrop, many organisations are turning to hybrid cloud solutions as a means of achieving greater flexibility, scalability and cost-efficiency in their IT operations.
One of these organisations is Nationwide Building Society, the world’s largest building society with over 17 million customers in the UK, that has announced a step forward in its digital transformation journey.
The mutual financial institution has selected Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) GreenLake cloud platform that provides pay-per-use IT resources, combining on-premises and cloud benefits, for its private cloud deployment, aiming to accelerate its hybrid cloud strategy and enhance its ability to meet the changing needs of its customers.
HPE GreenLake: Nationwide’s hybrid cloud vision takes shape
Nationwide’s decision to adopt HPE GreenLake forms part of a broader hybrid cloud strategy that the building society initiated in 2018.
This strategy recognises the need for different cloud environments to handle various types of data and workloads, reflecting the complex requirements of a modern financial institution.
Paul Walsh, Director of Infrastructure & Service Delivery at Nationwide Building Society, explained the rationale behind the move: “Nationwide’s hybrid cloud strategy is vital to our ability to compete and means we can continue to meet the needs and expectations of our customers. HPE GreenLake cloud is a core component of our hybrid cloud strategy.
“With them we’re building a cloud platform that will further improve our resilience and agility, enabling us to provide even better levels of service and deliver new capabilities to our developers faster than ever before.”
By leveraging HPE GreenLake’s capabilities, Nationwide aims to create a more agile, scalable, secure and efficient technology platform.
This is expected to improve the building society’s resilience and agility, enabling it to provide better service levels and deliver new capabilities to its developers more rapidly.
Enhancing operational efficiency and customer experience
The adoption of HPE GreenLake Management Services is also set to bring significant benefits to Nationwide’s IT operations.
KEY FACTS
- Nationwide expects to reduce its IT cost base by at least 30% through HPE GreenLake’s consumption-based model
- The solution offers monitoring of energy consumption and emissions, supporting Nationwide’s sustainability goals
- The hybrid approach allows Nationwide to use different cloud environments for various data types and workloads
- The partnership enables Nationwide to maintain regulatory compliance while leveraging cloud technology benefits
The solution will enable the building society’s IT team to automate and orchestrate infrastructure management and deliver infrastructure as code.
This approach is expected to free up resources for innovation and value-added activities, while also improving control over application builds and security.
Nationwide anticipates that faster release cycles will accelerate time to market for new products and services, providing a more consistent customer experience across all digital platforms.
At the same time, the building society will be able to maintain robust controls to manage risk, protect customers and meet regulatory demands.
Embracing cloud economics and sustainability
Nationwide’s hybrid cloud strategy additionally aims to optimise costs and improve sustainability.
The HPE GreenLake consumption-based model is designed to prevent overprovisioning, allowing Nationwide to pay only for the capacity it uses.
This approach is expected to support a reduction in the building society’s IT cost base by at least 30%.
Moreover, HPE GreenLake cloud provides Nationwide with a clear overview of its energy consumption and emissions, enabling more efficient infrastructure management and a reduced environmental impact.
The building society plans to further minimise its environmental footprint by upcycling and recycling decommissioned assets, such as end-of-use compute and storage infrastructure replaced by GreenLake.
Balancing public and private cloud capabilities
In the bigger picture, Nationwide’s hybrid cloud approach reflects a growing trend in the financial services sector, where institutions are seeking to leverage the benefits of both public and private cloud environments.
While public cloud services offer scalability and access to cutting-edge technologies, private cloud solutions like HPE GreenLake provide greater control over sensitive data and compliance-critical workloads.
The building society’s strategy involves using public cloud technologies, such as those offered by Amazon Web Services, alongside the HPE GreenLake private cloud setup.
This multi-cloud approach allows Nationwide to select the most appropriate environment for each type of data and workload, optimising performance, security and cost-efficiency.
“We are proud to support Nationwide with their cloud vision, providing them with enhanced control and security and the reliability and flexibility for growth,” says Matt Harris, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, UK, Ireland, Middle East and Africa at HPE.
“Nationwide’s modernisation journey showcases the effectiveness of HPE GreenLake cloud, with the storied institution transitioning from complex, legacy technology to a modern, future-proofed hybrid cloud operating model where a one-size-fits all public cloud could never be the only answer.”
The building society’s commitment to embracing cloud economics and sustainability also demonstrates how technological innovation can align with broader corporate responsibility goals, setting a benchmark for others in the industry to follow.
