Bank of America’s Cloud Expansion Could ‘Save a Ton of Money,’ CEO Says

Lananh Nguyen (Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp. is moving deeper into the cloud.

The Charlotte, North Carolina-based company’s internal cloud services have enabled it to cut the number servers it uses to 70,000 in 23 data centers, from 200,000 in 67 sites, Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan told analysts on a conference call Wednesday. The bulk of applications run on about 8,000 servers.

“We are working with potential providers to take the next step, which is discrete data centers and resources to internal cloud, save a ton of money, then use that power to actually negotiate with third parties,” Moynihan said.

While the bank considers the private cloud to be cheaper than using third parties, that’s likely to change, he said. A team run by Cathy Bessant, chief operations and technology officer, is vetting cloud vendors, particularly in the areas of security and data privacy.

“We don’t need to own the hardware, we just need to find out who can provide it the right way,” Moynihan said. “We have to make sure that the external providers are safe, sound, leave the data just for us to use with our customers, don’t mix it with other peoples’ data, et cetera. And that discussion and negotiation goes on as we speak.”