Core Banking Cloud Migration

A mid-size commercial bank in the UAE was running its core banking, CRM, and digital banking platforms on ageing on-premises infrastructure that was approaching end-of-life. Hardware refresh costs were estimated at AED 12M, and the inflexible infrastructure couldn't support the bank's digital transformation ambitions — including a new mobile banking app and real-time payment processing capabilities.

We designed a hybrid cloud architecture using Microsoft Azure's UAE data centres for data residency compliance, with a phased migration strategy that moved workloads over 9 months without disrupting daily banking operations. Non-critical workloads migrated first to validate the architecture, followed by the CRM and digital banking platform, and finally the core banking system during a carefully orchestrated weekend cutover.

The new architecture leverages Azure Kubernetes Service for containerised workloads, Azure SQL Managed Instance for database migration, and ExpressRoute for dedicated private connectivity between the bank's data centre and Azure. FinOps practices with automated right-sizing and reserved instances reduced the bank's total infrastructure costs by 45% compared to the on-premises refresh option, while providing elastic scalability for peak transaction periods.