The deal will enable BNP Paribas to utilize IBM Hybrid Cloud solutions to enhance its service capabilities via multiple environments.

Tech giant IBM has reportedly announced that it has inked an eight-year agreement to extend its cloud partnership with France's largest bank, BNP Paribas, for digital transformation, mobile services, real-time banking, and improved efficiency.

As per trusted sources, the latest agreement is an extension of a previous collaboration between both the companies, which includes the IT services firm BNP Paribas Partners for Innovation (BP2I) – a joint venture held equally by IBM and the bank since the year 2003.

According to a press release by IBM, the new deal will also enable BNP Paribas to utilize IBM Hybrid Cloud solutions to enhance its service capabilities via multiple environments, such as dedicated private and public clouds, ensuring integration between these several environments. It will also enable the bank to optimize the workload management between different Cloud infrastructure services, the press release further mentioned.

For the record, BNP Paribas developed its first private cloud in 2013 and is now set to integrate with IBM Cloud which is being hosted in the bank’s data centers. It released a statement noting that the bank will not deploy the public cloud for customer data or production environments with sensitive information.

Reportedly, the new technologies and banking services created by BNP Paribas through IBM solutions will support the development of new digital applications at the bank, accelerate the digitization of the bank, and improve the services offered by the bank.

Sources familiar with the development claim that IBM has been carving out a place for itself in the cloud services domain. The tech firm inked a seven-year, a USD 325 million deal with Juniper Networks Inc. to manage its IT services, applications, and existing infrastructure.

As per authentic sources, the terms of the new agreement are yet to be disclosed by both the companies.