Red Hat, Inc., an open source solutions provider, announced that Riyad Bank, a financial institution in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), has implemented a hybrid cloud strategy based on Red Hat’s portfolio of open hybrid cloud technologies, including Red Hat OpenShift. Red Hat’s open innovation is a cornerstone of the bank’s efforts to accelerate digital service and product innovation and time-to-market.
Riyad Bank is embarking on a digital transformation journey in order to increase its competitiveness in an expanding fintech market and contribute to the Kingdom’s Vision 2030. To that end, the bank is working to increase financial inclusion as well as support development, growth, and diversification in the banking sector, efforts fueled in part by emerging IT advancements.
“As fintech innovation fuels the disruption of business models and digitalizes customer expectations, Riyad Bank is responding in kind with its comprehensive digital transformation program backed by Red Hat’s open innovation. We’re pleased to work with a team so passionate about making a highly productive and creative contribution to fintech, and look forward to further collaborating with Riyad Bank to establish an agile foundation for its modern apps,” says Ali Al Shami, country manager, KSA and Bahrain, Red Hat.
Riyad Bank chose to build a flexible platform based on containers and Kubernetes in order to increase IT team productivity and respond to changing business demands. The bank desired a comprehensive, cloud-native solution that included open source code and open standards while also improving interoperability with existing and future IT investments and limiting total cost of ownership.
Jamil Barakat, executive vice president, Business Technology Division, Riyad Bank commented: “Riyad Bank’s enduring mission to help people, organizations and society achieve their financial aspirations requires us to maximise our flexibility so we can more rapidly amass new capabilities and experiences and lean into change. For this we need to be empowered by world-class technology platforms and a technology partner that understands our goals and pain points – we found this in Red Hat. Our innovation platform based on Red Hat hybrid cloud technologies is helping us fulfill our modernization strategy and in turn drive development for the financial sector in the Kingdom, helping make it a hub for investment and innovation.
Riyad Bank chose Red Hat OpenShift, the enterprise Kubernetes platform, for cross-organizational deployment, along with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to provide IT automation at scale, to meet these diverse needs. The bank also used Red Hat Consulting and Red Hat Learning Subscriptions to build a framework for repeatable microservices and a comprehensive training plan. The ultimate goal is to foster a more open organizational culture and to train teams in agile methods such as DevOps to help generate additional efficiencies.
Riyad Bank also uses Red Hat OpenStack Platform as a foundation for its private cloud, as well as Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation and Red Hat Ceph Storage to support its cloud infrastructure.
Riyad Bank was named a regional winner in the Red Hat EMEA Digital Leaders Awards 2021 for the approach it took and the impact it achieved on its transformation journey.
