The largest Italian banking group choose IBM to take full advantage of hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence opportunities

Through the agreement with IBM, Intesa Sanpaolo will be able to take full advantage of the opportunities offered in terms of hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence, which will allow a strong, open, flexible and secure digitization and, at the same time, will contribute to a significant reduction in energy consumption. 

Intesa Sanpaolo , the largest Italian banking group, and IBM, leader in technological innovation, announce an agreement for the adoption of innovative technological infrastructures that will allow an evolution of information security and performance together with the reduction of consumption in the IT sector.

Constantly evolving digital services and increasingly stringent regulations on security and sustainability make it necessary for banks to constantly update their technological infrastructures.

Intesa Sanpaolo ‘s 2022-2025 Business Plan envisages major investments for the optimization of the IT infrastructure, technological modernization, the introduction of the best cyber-security techniques and the creation of the new digital bank Isybank , with the aim to provide customers with the highest levels of performance, efficiency and security in the field of digital services. 

The Plan also envisages the adoption of increasingly stringent ESG policies, with the positioning of the Bank as a sector leader in terms of social impact and commitment to the climate and the ambition to achieve net zero emissions by 2030.

Through the agreement with IBM, Intesa Sanpaolo will be able to take full advantage of the opportunities offered in terms of hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence, which will allow a strong, open, flexible and secure digitization and, at the same time, will contribute to a significant reduction in energy consumption. 

„In particular, the modernization of the bank’s technological environment with the IBM z16 – designed with efficiency in mind to obtain greater performance with lower energy consumption – will allow Intesa Sanpaolo to reduce the energy consumption of this infrastructure component by about 20% and to help limit the environmental impact.” – the bank explains.

Intesa Sanpaolo has chosen to rely on IBM ‘s efficient and secure technologies such as the z16 systems and to continue adopting the Red Hat Openshift hybrid multi-cloud platform, the industry’s leading open source cloud consistent with the Group’s hybrid cloud model. The availability of application models and microservices hosted within Red Hat Openshift technology on z16 will enrich the Group’s range of transformative approaches towards native cloud logics .

The collaboration between Intesa Sanpaolo and IBM also lays the foundations for further developments, especially the preparation to help protect sensitive data and infrastructures from possible cyber attacks in a post-quantum future. As quantum computers become increasingly powerful, it is imperative that companies in highly regulated industries, such as banking, take steps to protect their data from a potential future quantum computer that could render today’s security standards ineffective in terms of of encryption. 

IBM is among the leading tech companies to have studied and developed a quantum-safe technology which allows you to protect sensitive data. Intesa Sanpaolo will also protect its data with the quantum-safe encryption capabilities of IBM z16, which provide the bank with the foundation to start future-proofing its systems, applications and data.