BNP Paribas and IBM Strengthen Long-Term Partnership to Enhance Cloud Capabilities and AI Development
In a significant move to bolster its technological infrastructure, BNP Paribas has announced the renewal and expansion of its partnership with IBM Cloud for the next decade. This collaboration is aimed at enhancing the bank’s resilience, expediting its cloud-native strategy, and supporting the growth of generative artificial intelligence (AI). This strategic partnership aligns with BNP Paribas’s ongoing technological investments and multi-cloud strategy intended to foster business growth, benefitting both customers and employees alike.
Announced on April 29, 2025, from Paris, France, BNP Paribas has been leveraging IBM Cloud services in its data centers since 2019. Over the years, this partnership has facilitated the bank in building a reliable and robust technological framework to support its digital transformation endeavors. Now, BNP Paribas plans to expand this collaboration by dedicating a new area within its data centers to IBM Cloud, set for completion in 2028. This expansion is designed to enhance the bank’s resilience by providing redundancy, ensuring the continuous operation of essential banking services such as payments, while safeguarding customer data and the bank’s information systems.
This initiative is part of BNP Paribas’s approach to complying with the European Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), which aims to fortify the operational resilience of financial institutions, specifically in business continuity and IT risk management. By establishing this new cloud infrastructure and meticulously managing the risks associated with cloud service providers, BNP Paribas can maintain its business continuity and safeguard customer data effectively.
The renewed partnership with IBM will enable BNP Paribas to leverage Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) on IBM Cloud, integrated with the bank’s cloud infrastructure. These resources are intended to empower business units in experimenting and deploying use cases for generative AI, an area of growing interest and investment across industries. Generative AI refers to the use of artificial intelligence to generate new content or data, such as images, text, or music, which can be highly beneficial in various business applications.
BNP Paribas is also progressing with its application modernization efforts through a cloud-native approach, utilizing containers (microservices) via Red Hat OpenShift. Red Hat OpenShift is IBM’s Kubernetes container management platform, which allows for the development of modular, scalable, and portable applications. This approach provides greater flexibility and responsiveness in managing banking services and is designed to facilitate the deployment of new applications, particularly in payment systems.
Marc Camus, Chief Information Officer of BNP Paribas, emphasized the importance of this technological investment, stating, "We continuously invest in cutting-edge technologies to strengthen the resilience of our infrastructures and drive innovation for our clients, employees, and partners. By combining GPUs as a service, a dedicated, state-of-the-art environment within our data centers, and a cloud-native infrastructure, we are strengthening our technological foundation, as well as the security and the compliance of our information systems."
Alan Peacock, General Manager of IBM Cloud, reflected on the longstanding partnership, saying, "For decades, IBM and BNP Paribas have worked together to build the banking infrastructure of the future, underpinned by the necessary resilience. The bank has joined IBM’s growing ecosystem of financial institutions and technology partners leveraging IBM Cloud for Financial Services to drive their mission of providing the best digital banking experience to customers, with security and compliance at the forefront. This latest milestone in our partnership will provide expanded enterprise-grade Cloud services across the entire bank to unlock new possibilities with AI and cloud innovation not only for BNP Paribas but for enterprises around the world."
BNP Paribas, a leader in banking and financial services in Europe, operates in 64 countries with nearly 178,000 employees, including more than 144,000 in Europe. The Group holds key positions in its three main activity fields: Commercial, Personal Banking & Services, Investment & Protection Services, and Corporate & Institutional Banking. BNP Paribas is committed to helping all its clients, including individuals, community associations, entrepreneurs, SMEs, corporate and institutional clients, realize their projects through solutions spanning financing, investment, savings, and protection insurance. The bank has implemented a Corporate Social Responsibility approach across all its activities, contributing to a sustainable future while ensuring the Group’s performance and stability.
IBM, a global leader in hybrid cloud and AI, provides consulting expertise and helps clients in over 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs, and gain a competitive edge. IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift are pivotal in assisting thousands of governments and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas like financial services, telecommunications, and healthcare to undergo digital transformations quickly, efficiently, and securely. IBM’s innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions, and consulting offer open and flexible options to clients, backed by a commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity, and service.
This partnership between BNP Paribas and IBM exemplifies a forward-thinking approach to technological advancement in the banking sector, ensuring the delivery of secure, efficient, and innovative banking services for a digital age. As the world continues to evolve technologically, the collaboration between these two industry giants will likely serve as a benchmark for other financial institutions aiming to enhance their digital capabilities and customer service offerings.
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