Westpac strikes five year AWS deal

Westpac has struck a new five year agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS), almost a year after doing a similar deal with Microsoft for Azure.

The bank said it had been working with AWS since 2015 and that the new agreement would expand its access to services, while also driving “cost efficiencies”.

Westpac has pursued a hybrid cloud architecture for a number of years, under what was originally called its hybrid platform-as-a-service or HPaaS.

Group CTO David Walker said in a statement that the bank intended to do more with “machine learning, compute, and data analytics” on the AWS ecosystem.

Westpac will also become an adopter of a financial services-themed role-playing game that ‘big four’ rival NAB has also taken up.

“We’ve made strong progress scaling up the use of cloud services over the past year which has driven this expanded collaboration with AWS,” Walker said.

“This collaboration will help us continue growing the use of cloud across the business so we can deliver new and enhanced digital-first experiences for our customers and employees, particularly through advanced technologies like conversational AI, banking-as-a-service, and our new transaction platform for institutional customers.”