DBS TO LEVERAGE AMAZON WEB SERVICES CLOUD

SINGAPORE, 27 July 2016 – DBS Bank, which has been on the
forefront of digital transformation, continues to lead the charge in
re-architecting its technology so as to be more “fintech-like” and responsive
to customer needs. The bank said today it has signed an agreement with leading
infrastructure provider, Amazon Web Services (AWS), to leverage its cloud
technology. With this, DBS will create a hybrid cloud environment optimised for
rapid changes of capacity and functionality, which is complementary to the
bank’s traditional use of data centres.

DBS’ early
adoption of cloud among financial sector players comes amid a digital
revolution that is redefining the banking industry. With the use of cloud, the
bank is better able to experiment in a digital way as well as deliver new
applications rapidly, while adhering to the highest standards of security.

Said DBS
Head of Technology and Operations, David Gledhill: “In today’s fast-changing
world, companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google and Netflix are widely
acknowledged as leaders in innovation. What sets them apart is their ability to
constantly experiment, automatically scale and rapidly bring new features to
market. They are able to do this in part by leveraging the flexibility provided
by cloud technology.”

DBS’
agreement with AWS was signed after an extensive period of evaluation by DBS,
as well as Proof of Concept experimentation, to explore how AWS can be
leveraged to augment the bank’s existing data centres.

DBS has
worked to ensure the implementation meets the requirements of the Monetary
Authority of Singapore’s Technology Risk Management guidelines. In addition,
DBS has established additional technology standards, internal approval toll
gates, and data encryption standards specific to its adoption of cloud.

“DBS’
commitment to migrate significant workloads to AWS is a reflection of their
focus not only on providing the best experience for their customers, but also
on being a leader in Singapore’s rapidly evolving financial services market,”
said Nick Walton, Head of ASEAN, Amazon Web Services. “We are excited that DBS
has chosen AWS to support their digital transformation, so that they can take
advantage of the many benefits of the AWS Cloud infrastructure, which has been
architected to be the most secure, reliable, and flexible cloud computing
environment in the world. AWS continues to work closely with financial
institutions around the world so that they can move to the cloud with
confidence.”

One of the
first use cases for AWS is in DBS’ Treasury and Markets (T&M) business. The
bank will leverage AWS for the purpose of pricing and valuing financial
instruments for risk management as this requires extensive computing power.

AWS gives
DBS the flexibility to rapidly scale the capacity of its computing grid up or
down, without having to make provisions for permanent overcapacity. In the
T&M case, it will allow the bank to have a quick and yet cost-effective way
of handling short term surges in trading volumes such as those recently caused
by Brexit.

The bank
envisages extending its usage of AWS over time and may shift up to 50% of its
compute workload to cloud within a two-year period. This will result in
dramatic cost savings, increased resilience and the ability to rapidly respond
to customer demand.

Over the
last five years, DBS has made significant investments in strategic technology
initiatives to weave banking into the everyday life of its customers so that
they can spend more time on people or things that they care about. This
includes initiating a comprehensive re-architecture of the bank’s technology as
well as catalysing a change in culture within the bank to one that is more
“fintech-like” in nature.