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Deutsche Börse and Microsoft reach a significant milestone for cloud adoption in the financial services industry

Release date:
06 May 2019
| Deutsche Börse

Deutsche Börse and Microsoft reach a significant milestone for cloud adoption in the financial services industry

Step-by-step migration of regulated workloads to the Microsoft Cloud Platform / Strategic partnership to set contract standards in the EU financial services industry and bring innovation to mutual customers

Christoph Böhm, Deutsche Börse AG - Sabine Bendiek, Microsoft Germany

Deutsche Börse and Microsoft have reached a significant milestone by closing a contract for the adoption of cloud services in the financial services industry. With this agreement, both partners are setting new contract standards in the EU financial services industry, allowing the launch of regulated workload on Microsoft cloud services in Europe. Deutsche Börse will use Microsoft cloud services, including the cloud platform Azure as well as Microsoft 365, the cloud offering for office and collaboration tools. 

Regulated workload includes services that are typically provided by financial institutions themselves and is considered essential for the respective core business. Operating these workloads in a cloud environment requires adherence to national and EU regulation. The contract closed by Deutsche Börse and Microsoft addresses these regulatory requirements. This agreement positions Deutsche Börse at the forefront of cloud adoption in the European financial services industry.

Under regulation, EU financial institutions are required to ensure unrestricted audit rights and capability to perform audits in case they outsource material workloads to cloud service providers. As a result, Deutsche Börse initiated a collaborative cloud audit group (CCAG) in 2017 in order to comply with these regulatory requirements. The collaborative audit group performs such audits in a collective manner, significantly reducing the effort for both financial institutions and cloud service providers. This industry-wide initiative includes large EU financial institutions and insurance companies. The CCAG’s first successful pooled audit on Microsoft Azure was completed in 2018. The CCAG and Microsoft will perform regular pooled audits on an annual basis.

Operating IT workload in Microsoft’s public cloud environment will ensure agility, enhanced quality and cost efficiencies. It will allow a faster implementation of new functionalities, improve efficiency by further automating the provisioning of infrastructure and services, and to deploy a state-of-the-art cloud-based office solution. With this instant provisioning, Deutsche Börse will be able to react dynamically to changing business and customer demands and benefits from hundreds of services readily available. In addition, new regulatory requirements can be addressed in a more agile way, to the benefit of customers and markets.

“Cloud is a main driver for innovation and has the potential to reshape the financial services industry. As a key technology, cloud lays the foundation for enabling major initiatives that support Deutsche Börse Group’s Roadmap 2020,” said Christoph Böhm, member of the Executive Board of Deutsche Börse AG. “Together with Microsoft as a strong partner, we are very much looking forward to accelerating cloud adoption, for us as a company and for our clients”.

“As a platform provider, Microsoft is committed to supporting our partner Deutsche Börse in achieving their growth ambitions. This means understanding the market they are in and helping them to overcome the specific challenges of their industry,” said Sabine Bendiek, Managing Director of Microsoft Germany. “This step by Deutsche Börse is an important signal for cloud adoption in the entire financial industry and other industries with regulated workloads. With our joint approach, Deutsche Börse and Microsoft enable all companies in the European financial market to make full use of cloud services.”

The usage of public cloud services will also support the further development of the key technologies DLT/blockchain, big data/analytics and automation/artificial Intelligence. These are part of Deutsche Börse’s Group-wide strategic focus on new technologies. Cloud services will allow for developing and running blockchain-based services, including public cloud components in big data/analytics solutions to analyse large data sets and the usage of specialised services for machine learning.

In a first step, Deutsche Börse will accelerate the cloud migration of workload in 2019. This includes services such as the development and testing of business applications and parts of the Deutsche Börse SAP environment. First material regulated workload, such as core services to disseminate data will follow subsequently in close alignment with the relevant regulatory authorities.

About Deutsche Börse

Deutsche Börse Group is one of the largest exchange organisations worldwide. It organises markets characterised by integrity, transparency and safety for investors who invest capital and for companies that raise capital – markets on which professional traders buy and sell equities, derivatives and other financial instruments according to clear rules and under strict supervision. Deutsche Börse Group, with its services and systems, ensures the functioning of these markets and a level playing field for all participants – worldwide.