PrivatBank has moved its data centers to the EU. The bank told the details of migration to the cloud

The largest Ukrainian state-owned bank, PrivatBank, has moved its data centers from Kiev and Dnipro to the territory of the European Union. More than 460 IT specialists and contractors worked on this project, which took them less than 45 days, said Roman Sulzhik, a member of the supervisory board of the State Bank, during an online discussion between the Center for economic strategy and the German Economic Team.

Details of bank relocation

It is known that since the beginning of March 2022, the National Bank of Ukraine has allowed banks to keep customer data outside the country.

"Now all Privat operates on the territory of the European Union. We have transferred all the data there in just the last 45 days," Sulzyk said on April 28.

It was this activity that he explained minor failures in the work of the financial institution in recent weeks.

"You understand what would happen if the invaders could destroy PrivatBank's data centers in Kiev or Dnipro. Therefore, now Privat works entirely from Europe. And this transfer is really an incredible achievement, which we managed to make in just 45 days," the banker stressed.

He also added that since the beginning of the war, the bank's loan portfolio for businesses has grown by more than 50%.

Official comment of Privat

On the morning of April 29, a message appeared on the website of PrivatBank that the state bank had completed migration to the cloud.

"We worked on migrating our IT systems from a physical data center to the cloud in order to minimize dependence on the physical presence of computer equipment located in different regions of Ukraine, which could have been destroyed during the war. As a result, all the main applications of PrivatBank were successfully transferred to cloud storage in order to provide customers with access to financial services (banking services, access to cash, etc.) at any time," the financial institution explained.

At the same time, they named key facts about this migration:

it took less than 45 days for all important applications to be safely hosted and launched from the cloud environment;3,500 servers were moved;more than 4 petabytes of client data and transactions were uploaded to the cloud;more than 270 important applications were moved;more than 460 PrivatBank IT specialists and contractors worked on the project.

"We are extremely proud of the truly titanic work that our IT team has done to ensure that customers have access to financial services. For comparison, the amount of work that we have implemented for projects of such complexity and scale in the "normal" project it cycle usually takes 1.5 years or more," the bank stressed.

They also apologized for the temporary inconvenience associated with problems when making payments or card transfers. Now the financial institution assures that these works have been completed and PrivatBank continues to operate as usual.

Starting from April 14, 2022, the NBU allowed banks to sell foreign currency in cash to the public, and also clarified the rules for banks to repay loans to non-residents.