SBI chooses Microsoft Office 365 for cloud powered productivity

The State Bank of India (SBI) on Thursday chose Office 365, the cloud powered productivity solution from Microsoft to improve communication and collaboration among its workforce, thus addressing the banking behemoth's requirement of transforming it into a modern workplace.

The largest public-sector bank of India, SBI announced deployment of Office 365 at its 23,423 branches, enabling 263,000 employees and more than 500 million customer accounts under it.

The employees will now experience a modern digital workplace platform that will empower them to collaborate effectively from any device anywhere (Android, iOS, Mac and Windows), provide an integrated experience and reduce complexity.

They will be able to use familiar and easy-to-use tools naturally in everyday work, while addressing key aspects of data security and sovereignty.

However, Microsoft has also consolidated SBI's messaging and collaboration server infrastructure in 17 countries, helping it save more than USD 200,000 annually.

"We are excited about our partnership with Microsoft. As India's economy continues to grow, the BFSI sector needs to be well-equipped to address dynamic market pressures and rapidly evolving industry needs. As the Digital Banker to the Nation, Microsoft's cutting-edge technology is helping us lead this digital transformation by making it part of our DNA," said chairman State Bank of India, Rajnish Kumar.

"We are thrilled to partner with State Bank of India on their digital transformation as they harness the intelligent cloud and build new digital capability to empower their employees; engage customers in new ways and transform their products and services, while maintaining security, trust and compliance with industry regulations," said CEO Microsoft, Satya Nadella in the statement.

With Microsoft's commitment to fuel the digital transformation of the BFSI sector with the best-in-class cloud services like Office 365, SBI will derive benefits from this digital transformation in three phases including making itself agile by rapidly upgrading to cloud based technology, focusing on user adoption by identifying use cases based on work profiles, and transforming business by process alignment with the new tools, thus ultimately enhancing both, branch and customer experience.