PrivatBank Protects Business, Safeguards Customer Access to Banking Services at Time of Unrest by Migrating to AWS

“With Russian troops entering the country, we needed to make sure we protected our people and our employees,” says Kaczmarek. “We also had to ensure our services were available to clients—that ATMs were working properly, there was enough cash in the system, and online services were operational.”

Focusing on the bank’s critical infrastructure was key. With two on-premises data centers, Kaczmarek and his team were all-too aware that if the bank’s hardware was jeopardized, services to clients would be too. They decided to migrate to AWS to secure the availability of its core banking systems in the cloud.

“After getting the go-head from the regulator—the National Bank of Ukraine—we started the migration process, with AWS supporting us in moving what we had on-premises to the cloud,” says Kaczmarek.

The PrivatBank and AWS teams moved all the bank’s applications and services in just 2 months. This involved 4 petabytes of client data and 270 applications across 3,500 servers based in Ukraine. “Working with the team at AWS, we completed one of the fastest migrations ever,” says Kaczmarek. “In that short period, we were able to preserve and protect our business.”

The migration, Kaczmarek says, is notable not just for its speed, but also for the positive outcomes for the business as well as the people of Ukraine that depend on its services. In the face of advancing Russian troops, the bank managed to act swiftly and protect operations while helping ensure its customers never lost access to financial services at this time of conflict and uncertainty.

“Our clients are happy, the bank’s owners are happy, and shareholders are happy,” says Kaczmarek. “It’s a great success story.” And now that core banking functionality isn’t reliant on physical servers and data centers, the bank is confident that it can maintain vital services to customers and keep its business operational, no matter what.