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Contino ‘raises the bar’ for Bendigo and Adelaide Bank ahead of AWS migration

Assisted bank move 30 non-critical workloads to AWS cloud in 30 days

Technology consulting firm Contino has helped Bendigo and Adelaide Bank move 30 workloads to Amazon Web Services (AWS) in just 30 days. 

The AWS partner worked almost entirely virtually with the bank to prepare it for the non-critical workload shift, carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Speaking to ARN during AWS’ re:Invent conference in Sydney, the bank’s chief information officer Andrew Cresp said they sought a partner to help his team with its “bar-raising” ahead of the migration.  

“We wanted someone who could get us up the maturity curve really quickly,” he said. “We spoke to a few [partners] and decided Contino would be the best fit for our organisation. 

“Fundamentally we were looking for someone with deep technical capabilities, which we think would work with our culture. We’re a very customer-focused community and wanted to make sure they were obsessed as we were. 

“Most importantly, it was about the deep understanding of DevOps – where had they done that in similar-sized organisation that could help us accelerate.” 

Contino provided a consultancy role primarily, helping the bank design some of the applications landing zones, as well as a number of patterns. 

According to Cresp, the solutions were bought directly from AWS, which also helped train 250 of its developers trained on the cloud provider’s services.  

Between 80 and 90 percent of the '30 in 30' migration was completed by internal staff following their training, with the remaining work done by AWS and Contino. 

The migration comes as part of both Bendigo and Adelaide Bank’s move towards cloud acceleration and its overall open banking strategy.  

“Any change that puts control of the customers and not the banking system is good,” Cresp added. 

“Banking is one of the foundational capabilities and we really wanted to fast-track our route to digitsation. Realistically, some of the things that have happened this year would not have happened without COVID. “ 

Headquartered in London, Contino has operations in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia and is both an AWS premium partner, while also boasting Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. 

Last year, Contino was acquired by professional services company Cognizant for an unspecified amount.