The director of General Electric, Jack Welch, said: “to innovate is to change before you have to.” That is, don't let circumstances force you to do it. Today, there are many companies, organizations or institutions that have already embarked on a process of change, supported by the winds of digital transformation, so it is worth highlighting those that, in doing so, bravely break with established paths. .
There are those who move away from the most common routes and, with this, make way for all those who come after them. Banco Santander has done it. A sort of Christopher Columbus who, with Gravity, has conspired to open new avenues in a very specific field: the cloud. A technology that is also synonymous with rupture, birth, and leap into the void, taking the entity chaired by Ana Botín to the top of innovation.
Gravity is its own software and platform that the entity has created internally with one objective: to migrate its traditional operations to the cloud, completely digitizing its banking core. A leap that has led it to become the first major bank in the world to digitize core banking with its own software. For the uninitiated, we are talking about the most critical part of a bank's IT infrastructure, where the main financial operations are processed, such as money transfers, deposits or loans.
The results are tangible: it has already migrated more than 90% of its technological infrastructure to the cloud. In practice, this transformation is enabling easier and faster access to data, greater simplicity, faster release of new functionality to customers – in hours instead of days or weeks – and more frequent mobile app updates. It also helps the bank significantly improve customer experience, products and services, and drive value with real-time analytics.
To modernize traditional technology systems (mainframe), Gravity's software enables simultaneous data processing, so the bank can run workloads on its mainframe and in the cloud at the same time. This solution makes it possible to perform tests in real time without interrupting the business, and if that were not enough, it does so by reducing the bank's energy consumption for the technological infrastructure by 70%, which contributes to its responsible banking goals.
The Banker magazine has described Gravity as a “huge and very ambitious” project. And it is. A journey that reinforces Santander's innovative DNA, since with this implementation it has been recognized by the prestigious publication as the “most innovative bank in the world.” The magazine has given it the highest recognition of its awards for innovation in digital banking thanks to the tests that have already been carried out in several businesses in countries such as the United Kingdom and Chile without having to interrupt the service, and its “consequences”: improving significantly improve the customer experience and bring important efficiencies thanks to innovative comprehensive automation processes.
Banco Santander works daily to offer its clients the best services and does so through innovation understood as the search for excellence, but without losing efficiency. Hence, the financial institution opted for Gravity to digitize the banking core without the user noticing this transformation. “Innovation is a fundamental part of our transformation and helps us provide better service to customers, achieve profitable growth and create value,” explains Ana Botín, president of Santander.
Behind this cloud-native core banking platform is an important team of technological professionals. In fact, some of the experts involved in Gravity created the previous system 20 years ago and are now moving it to the cloud. To all of them, Santander's 16,500 software developers and engineers, Gravity provides a high-performance environment to create customer-focused applications, becoming a pole of talent attraction.
It is estimated that Gravity will lead the bank to become a completely digital company between the end of 2024 and the first half of 2025, and that when it is 100% implemented, more than one billion technical operations per year can be managed from this platform.
