Arvest Bank moves 40% of apps to cloud
$26B bank reduced on-prem data center servers by 98% at one site
Arvest Bank is accelerating its digital transformation, using Google Cloud to modernize operations and enhance customer service.
As part of the initiative, the financial institution has migrated 40% of targeted applications to the cloud, leading to a 98% reduction in on-premises servers at one data center since 2022, Mark Chastain, executive director for IT and cloud services at Arvest, told Bank Automation News.
Arvest’s cloud-enabled apps include:
- Arvest Go Mobile Banking App;
- Equipment Finance Lending Product; and
- Website Payment Capture Platform.
Multicloud strategy
While Arvest’s primary cloud provider has been Google Cloud since signing a five-year partnership in 2022, the Bentonville, Ark.-based bank is pursuing a hybrid strategy, Chastain said.
“A multicloud approach allows for Arvest to distribute risk across multiple cloud vendors, adopt best-of-breed services from multiple cloud providers, and increase scale and operations across Arvest cloud environments,” Chastain said, declining to name the bank’s other cloud providers.
Despite revving up cloud migration, Arvest has no plans to move 100% to the cloud, Chastain said.
“We will always have some data and some applications running from an on-premises data center,” he said.
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3 reasons for hybrid
For Arvest, three factors influenced its hybrid cloud and on-premises data center approach:
- Legacy systems: Some systems are incompatible with the cloud and cannot be migrated;
- Cost: Cloud migration is assessed on a case-by-case basis with some apps more being cost effective to run on premises; and
- Data control: The bank ensures that cloud tools keep data within its dedicated cloud environment.
The hybrid trend
Other FIs have also opted for multicloud hybrid strategies to mitigate risk and maximize flexibility.
Banks gravitate toward hybrid cloud strategies because on-premises systems provide operational stability, while cloud migration enables innovation, Kriti Gupta, practice director at consulting firm Everest Group, told BAN.
“Balancing innovation with the critical need for operational continuity is a key concern for banks globally.”
— Kriti Gupta, practice director, Everest Group
For example, Ally Financial uses cloud-native, on-premises data center-supported and hybrid solutions depending on the use case or an application’s complexity, Sathish Muthukrishnan, chief information officer at the $197 billion bank, previously told BAN.
Amsterdam-based ING Bank also uses a hybrid approach to ensure control over data security and regulatory compliance, Marco Eijsackers, global head of tech strategy at the $1.2 trillion ING, told BAN.
Meanwhile, Citizens Bank aims to move all of its applications to the cloud by the third quarter, Ajay Punia, head of fraud risk and transmissions engineering, recently told BAN. The $217.5 billion bank is also using a multicloud approach to increase scalability, Punia said.
Modernization goals
As part of its cloud strategy, Arvest established a Cloud Center of Excellence and Cloud Financial Operations teams and validated its multi-region cloud disaster recovery capabilities.
The bank’s 2025 goals include modernizing its client-facing solutions and exploring AI use cases such as AI Code Assist and Google Gemini for Workspace to enhance internal efficiency, Chastain said.
“We estimate that we will finish application modernization in 2027,” he said.
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