When implementing individual cloud solutions for each affiliate firm ran into complexities, a unified central private cloud emerged as the answer

After identifying wealth management, corporate investment finance, digital and global investments as its four key growth areas, a financial group in South Korea comprising nine businesses worth a total of 152tn won (approx. US$116bn) with 8,000 employees has built a private cloud to replace aging infrastructure for handling growing business needs.

Since 2019, BNK Financial Group had been expanding its IT infrastructure with cloud computing services to improve operational efficiency and keep up with the digitalization demands of the succeeding years of pandemic disruption.

Today, approximately 90% of BNK systems, including some of its back-office banking systems, websites, and human resources management tools, are more efficient and secure on their group-wide private cloud, ultimately enhancing synergy among its affiliates. In the future, the group plans to migrate and operate all of its on-premises systems on the shared private cloud.

In the initial stages, BNK had attempted a complex introduction of a cloud solution for each of its affiliates — a complex and costly exercise that was deemed to require simplification and greater centralization and cost flexibility. Subsequently, the digital transformation plan was tweaked to involve the gradual migration to a group-wide private cloud.

According to Dong Joon Oh, Managing Director, BNK System D-IT Business Headquarters: “The shared private cloud is used for establishing the new shared system and migrating the existing system, and we will gradually extend its use. In addition, platform advancement projects such as a hybrid cloud platform and Platform-as-a-Service are under review.”

Said Seung Cheol Choi, Managing Director (Korea Sales), Nutanix, the group’s technology partner: “Nutanix will continue to provide technical support to BNK Financial Group until the remainder of its business systems are fully in its private cloud. In addition, we will continue to establish ourselves as a smart partner in solving IT complexity and concerns about digital transformation that banks and financial companies have.”