Zürcher Kantonalbank has announced that it will begin moving its applications and data to the public cloud in 2022 and the bank has chosen Microsoft Switzerland as its first cloud provider.

The move will not be done automatically; rather, each application will be weighed to determine if it is the right time to make the switch.

Security remains the most important priority for the bank going forward.

In the coming years, Zürcher Kantonalbank will move some of its IT applications and data to the cloud.

Remo Schmidli

In an interview with the IT trade publication “Computerworld”, Remo Schmidli, Head of IT, Operations & Real Estate at Zürcher Kantonalbank said,

“Cloud technology has evolved greatly in recent years – from a niche product to what is now a mature overall solution.

Anyone who is seriously interested in IT today can no longer ignore the cloud. Because the cloud has really matured.”

According to Remo Schmidli, the benefits and potential drawbacks of the cloud were discussed intensively internally.

“In the end, the benefits clearly outweighed the drawbacks. Innovative power, scalability and time-to-market clearly spoke in favor of the move to the cloud. At the same time, we were and are not willing to make any compromises when it comes to security.

This imperative has previously applied when we signed a contract with a service provider, and it also holds true now when we work with a hyperscaler.”

The evaluation of private cloud technologies has also shown that Swiss providers are not able to fully compete with the large cloud providers in terms of innovation and investments, according to Schmidli, who has been responsible for IT as a member of the Executive Board of Zürcher Kantonalbank since 2019.

“We evaluated both Swiss companies and global hyperscalers – in the end, we chose Microsoft as the first provider.”

An important factor in the decision was Microsoft Switzerland’s local data centers, which have been up and running since 2019 and ensure data is stored in Switzerland.

Microsoft has data centers in the Geneva and Zurich regions, as well as the additional Azure Availability Zones now in operation.