Google just signed its biggest deal yet with a single company to offer cloud services with 110,000 employees in 26 countries of Spanish bank BBVA switching to Google apps. The bank will use apps like Gmail, Calendar, Chat, Docs, and it will have employees’ access video chats and other collaboration tools. According to BBVA, the deal is the “largest global agreement for the adoption of Google Apps, Google Enterprise suite.”
Through this solution, BBVA seeks to increase its efficiency by providing employees the tools of advanced communication and collaboration. In addition, Google Apps will facilitate collaboration among professionals from the bank, regardless of geographic area in which they are. This is essential to drive innovation in a financial group as global as BBVA.
According to a report from BBC, who talked with BBVA, the move was largely driven by an increasing number of the bank’s staff utilizing smartphones and tablets as their main computer. The bank already moved 35,000 employees to Google Apps and it expects it to roll out to 110,000 staff members during 2012.
Director of innovation for BBVA Carmen Herranz confirmed to BBC that all customer data would remain on the bank’s servers with the move to Google services only applying to communication among staff. The bank had previously rolled out a successful pilot project with around 7,000 staff, and plans to “closely monitor for any increases in network load.” Herranz said their biggest concern is video conferencing.
Vice President of Google Enterprise EMEA Sebastien Marotte gave a statement in BBVA’s press release highlighting the importance of the announcement and growth of Google Apps:
“We have noticed in recent years as companies of all sizes, including enterprises with tens of thousands of users are embracing cloud computing technology. For us that BBVA, one of the largest financial institutions in the world, decides to make the leap to Google Apps Google reinforces the strategy to bet on cloud computing. This shows that work in the cloud is already a reality and no one wants to get out of it. Leading companies are already changing the way we see this technology and are realizing the potential that these technology solutions can make to transform your business time,”
The bank will also be providing employees with training material for Google Apps and encouraging all employees to switch, but it will continue to make previous email and data applications available for the time being.
Founded in 1857, BBVA is the second largest bank in Spain and the largest financial institute in Mexico with operations in over 30 countries worldwide including the United States. It currently has 584,000 million in assets, 50 million customers, and 7,436 offices. According to Google, more than 4 million businesses are now using Google Apps and Google Enterprise tools.
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