Nationwide Building Society backs HPE GreenLake for hybrid cloud push

Nationwide Building Society is drawing on HPE’s private cloud capabilities to help deliver on the next phase of its multi-year hybrid cloud strategy.

The company, which has more than 17 million customers in the UK and employs 18,000 people, is in midst of a hybrid cloud-focused digital transformation project, geared towards improving the online experience for its customers.

As previously reported by Computer Weekly, this work, which began in 2018, has seen the firm use public cloud technologies, such as those offered by Amazon Web Services, and embrace the use of DevOps-style software development methodologies within its teams.

The project has also seen Nationwide adopt different cloud technologies based on what is best for that particular type of data or workload, which is why the company is now adding the HPE Greenlake private cloud setup to its supplier mix too.

“Nationwide’s hybrid cloud strategy is vital to our ability to compete and means we can continue to meet the needs and expectations of our customers – HPE GreenLake cloud is a core component of our hybrid cloud strategy,” said Paul Walsh, director of infrastructure and service delivery at Nationwide.

“With them, we’re building a cloud platform that will further improve our resilience and agility, enabling us to provide even better levels of service and deliver new capabilities to our developers faster than ever before.”

Specifically, Nationwide will use HPE GreenLake management services to automate and orchestrate its infrastructure management workloads and deliver infrastructure-as-code, the company said.

“This [will] enable [Nationwide] to focus on innovation, value-add activities and gain better control over application builds and security,” said the company, in a statement. “Faster release cycles will accelerate the time to market, providing consistent customer experiences across all digital platforms.”

The HPE GreenLake cloud setup will also provide Nationwide with an overview of its energy consumption and emissions, so that it can take proactive steps to reduce its environmental footprint, the company added.

Matt Harris, senior vice-president and managing director for the UK, Ireland, Middle East and Africa at HPE, said the complexities of the deployment highlight why taking a public cloud-only approach would not work for a company like Nationwide.

“Nationwide’s modernisation journey showcases the effectiveness of HPE GreenLake cloud, with the storied institution transitioning from complex, legacy technology to a modern, future-proofed hybrid cloud operating model where a one-size-fits-all public cloud could never be the only answer,” said Harris.

Nationwide is not the only financial services company tapping into HPE GreenLake to deliver on its hybrid cloud strategy, as Barclays Bank also set out plans in September 2024 to ramp up its use of the technology for that purpose.