BankingCore Infrastructure Migration for a Tier-1 Investment Bank
Migrating 420 production workloads to AWS for a Tier-1 investment bank — with zero downtime, full regulatory compliance, and 38% cloud cost reduction in year one.
Client
Confidential — Tier-1 Investment Bank
Expertise
Programme OutcomesResults at a glance
420
Production workloads
Migrated across jurisdictions
38%
Cloud cost reduction
Year-one savings vs baseline
14
Month programme
On time against deadline
0
Regulatory findings
Across FCA, PRA, SEC, MAS
The ChallengeLegacy infrastructure constraining a global bank
The client — one of the largest investment banks in Europe — operated a fragmented on-premise infrastructure spanning six data centres across three continents. Ageing hardware, inconsistent disaster recovery posture, and escalating data centre costs had reached a tipping point.
Regulatory complexity was the primary constraint. The bank operated under FCA, PRA, SEC, and MAS oversight — each with distinct data residency, audit trail, and business continuity requirements. Any migration approach had to accommodate simultaneous multi-jurisdictional compliance, a constraint that had previously stalled two earlier migration attempts.
The client had a hard deadline: a data centre lease expiry in 14 months that made migration non-negotiable. BrezQ was engaged as the sole delivery partner for the entire programme.
The BrezQ ApproachA phased migration with compliance-first architecture
BrezQ established a cloud programme office at programme day one, embedding a Principal Cloud Architect, Delivery Manager, FinOps Lead, and Security Architect directly within the client's technology team. Governance was structured around a biweekly Technical Design Authority, a monthly Steering Committee, and a continuous change advisory board.
The migration was executed in six phases aligned to risk profile — development and test environments first, then lower-criticality production workloads, then the trading systems and core banking platforms last. AWS was selected as the primary cloud provider, with Azure used for specific EU data residency requirements.
A compliance-as-code framework was built at programme inception — ensuring that every workload migrated into an environment already compliant with the relevant jurisdiction's requirements. Security controls were automated via AWS Config, Security Hub, and a custom compliance dashboard visible to the client's internal audit team in real time.
Technologies Deployed
The OutcomeDelivered in 14 months — on time, compliant, under budget
All 420 production workloads were migrated within the 14-month programme window, with the final data centre decommissioned 3 days ahead of the lease expiry. ISO 27001 certification was maintained throughout, with no regulatory findings from FCA, PRA, SEC, or MAS during the migration period.
Cloud cost reduction of 38% was realised in year one — exceeding the original 28% business case target — driven by right-sizing, Reserved Instance optimisation, and the elimination of over-provisioned on-premise hardware.
The programme was delivered 6% under the approved budget. BrezQ's FinOps practice continued as a retained managed service post-migration, responsible for ongoing cost governance.
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