IBM today announced that its Cloud for Financial Services, now supports Red Hat’s OpenShift, an open-source application container platform that helps businesses manage their workloads in a hybrid cloud set up. Hybrid clouds use a combination of private and public cloud infrastructure to store data.

IBM’s dedicated financial services cloud was initially launched in 2019, designed in collaboration with Bank of America; the software-maker later worked with global financial institutions like BNP Paribas, Luminor Bank and MUFG, among others, to develop its cloud offering for the financial sector.

“With a focus on data security delivered with IBM’s confidential computing and sophisticated encryption capabilities, we are helping to de-risk the supply chain for banks, insurers and other financial services industry players,” Howard Boville, head of IBM hybrid cloud platform, said in a statement.

IBM’s hybrid cloud was designed with a focus on security and compliance, and uses “fourth-generation confidential computing capabilities” and “keep your own key” encryption, which is backed by the highest level of security certification commercially available, according to IBM.

Banks tend to prefer being in “complete control of their data,” Likhit Wagle, general manager for global banking at IBM global markets, told Bank Automation News. On the financial services cloud, banks will be the exclusive owners of their own encryption keys, thereby controlling who is able to use their data.

In addition to its own support for Red Hat’s OpenShift platform, IBM said the $2.4 trillion BNP Paribas has migrated more than 40 line-of-business applications onto the platform, and the bank’s dedicated Multi Zone Region (MZR) data centers in Paris will be equipped with the necessary security and controls to continue onboarding additional bank workloads. An MZR can ensure an application’s availability, in case one of the data centers encounters an issue or is taken offline.

“We’re collaborating with IBM to establish a BNP Paribas-dedicated cloud that is compatible with all the constraints that are imposed by regulators throughout the world,” Bernard Gavgani, global chief information officer at BNP Paribas, said in a statement.

Adoption of cloud computing among financial institutions has lagged, Wagle said, due to concerns about regulatory compliance and data privacy, although it offers increased security and availability of data. “A lot of banks tend to be global businesses,” Wagle said, adding that this gives rise to a desire to ensure consistency in compliance capabilities. Referring to regulations like Europe’s data protection laws and U.K.’s approach to regulating open banking, he said there’s likely to “considerable convergence” in such rules worldwide in the next two to three years.

With respect to changing compliance requirements, IBM will offer “instant evidence” capabilities so that banks don’t have to collect data for regulators, said Wagle. He noted that compliance controls are already built in and, when new regulations roll out, IBM will build those controls to cut down compliance costs for financial institutions.

It’s likely banks will be looking to migrate more of their workloads onto the cloud going forward, said Wagle. But regulations and data privacy concerns could pose obstacles to such a migration, he added, so the software giant has focused on building out a cloud platform that can help highly-regulated sectors like banking move towards cloud computing while staying in line with rules and guidelines.

Bank Automation Ignite, on April 13-14, is the event for inspiring automation initiatives and investment in financial services. At the virtual event, financial services professionals can discover new use cases and technologies that are accelerating automation in banking. Learn more and register at www.BankAutomationIgnite.com.