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Wells Fargo (WFC) Taps Cloud Services of Microsoft & Google

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Underlining a new digital infrastructure strategy, Wells Fargo & Company (WFC - Free Report) has announced that it will adopt a public multi-cloud approach and use third-party data centers to improve technological speed, resilience, and scalability for its customers and employees.

To move its data to the public cloud and manage the process, the Wall Street biggie has picked Microsoft Azure as its primary public cloud provider and Google Cloud to provide additional business-critical public cloud services.

Specifically, Wells Fargo will use the Microsoft Azure platform to facilitate the conception of new innovative solutions across bank functions. The platform will also offer a reliable and safe understructure for strategic business workloads. Wells Fargo will also partner with Microsoft Azure to use crucial data and analytics services that will advance its digital transformation, including improvement in customer experiences and increased employee collaboration.

The partnership with Google Cloud will drive advanced workloads, and complex artificial intelligence and data solutions, which will enable the bank to make headway in driving personalized experiences for its customers and clients.

Wells Fargo has been criticized for its outdated systems and technology failures in the past. The new digital infrastructure strategy will address these concerns with a secure and compliant cloud platform to safeguard the data, privacy, and financial assets of Wells Fargo’s customers. This will ensure data confidentiality and decrease the chances of breaches.

As an additional element of the new digital infrastructure strategy, Wells Fargo will transition to a set of third-party-owned data centers, while the company’s longer-term aspirations are to rely predominantly on the public cloud.

These facilities will  support Microsoft and Google Cloud’s public cloud offerings with both private cloud and traditional hosting services. This will add flexibility and reduce the costs of operating its own data centers by renting public ones. 

Wells Fargo’s management noted, “The Wells Fargo of tomorrow will be digital-first and offer easier-to-use products and services, and all of that starts with driving speed, scalability, and enhanced user experience through the next generation digital infrastructure strategy we’re announcing today.”

Judson Althoff, Microsoft’s CEO remarked, “By standardizing on the Microsoft cloud and trusting Azure as its most strategic and primary cloud platform across all lines of business, Wells Fargo will be able to advance its key business and technology transformation priorities across core areas like managing risk and control, personalized banking, and the digital branch of the future.”

Shares of the company have gained 13.4% over the past six months compared with 2.4% growth recorded by the industry.

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Wells Fargo currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Similar Steps by Other Banks

A growing number of financial services organizations, including banks, are advancing their digital infrastructure strategies and focusing on offering frictionless digital services for their customers and clients.

At a Barclays investor conference, Capital One’s (COF - Free Report) CEO Richard Fairbank said that the company will beta test a buy-now pay-later service later this year. He further stated that the product will be tested with some of the existing customers at “select set of merchants” and it won’t be linked to the company’s private-label credit-card business.

Recently, New York Community Bancorp, Inc.’s subsidiary, New York Community Bank built a cutting-edge digital payment process via the development of a blockchain-induced digital marker — USD Forward (USDF) — which is the first to be used by a bank on the Provenance Blockchain. This will aid Figure Technologies, Inc. to operate real-time secondary trading in digital shares of its stock by using its alternative trading system.

Northern Trust (NTRS - Free Report) has launched an artificial intelligence-powered tool to derive unstructured investment information from alternative asset documents in a bid to further digitize its alternative asset servicing business. This underpins the company’s efforts to enhance its asset owner clients’ experience as well as abate operational risk in the alternative asset servicing business.


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