Swiss banking technology provider: 300+ core banking applications reviewed. Compliant multi-cloud foundation on Azure and Google Cloud. 5–7 year migration roadmap delivered.

The Challenge

The company’s core banking platform was reliable and compliant - but increasingly static. Stability had accumulated over years until it became a constraint: the system was too rigid to adapt quickly, too costly to extend, and architecturally misaligned with where banking technology was heading. The imperative was not survival but futurity: the platform needed to become cloud-native without sacrificing the regulatory integrity and operational continuity it had spent decades building. The technical scale of the challenge was substantial. More than 300 distinct banking applications had been built on and around the existing system. Any migration approach had to account for every application, every integration point, and every data flow - while maintaining the performance and compliance expected of live banking infrastructure. A single disruption to transaction processing would directly affect the retail banking customers of dozens of partner institutions. Beyond the technology, there was a cultural dimension. Preparing an organization accustomed to decades of traditional on-premise operations to operate confidently in a cloud-native environment required deliberate capability building. Technical migration without organizational readiness would produce a cloud platform managed by a workforce still thinking in on-premise terms. Swiss regulatory constraints added a further layer of complexity. FINMA’s data sovereignty requirements preclude offshoring of banking data, and the Instant Payments mandate - requiring Swiss banks to be compliant by November 2026 - added an immovable deadline to the transformation timeline.

The Approach

Gradion engaged as a strategic transformation partner, bringing a Technical Advisor, PM/PO, and AI Engineer into an 8-week structured engagement. The work began with an in-depth system architecture review across all 300+ core banking applications. Gradion assessed the entire ecosystem for regulatory audit readiness and long-term cloud compatibility, establishing a clear and comprehensive baseline before any migration decisions were taken. On that foundation, Gradion collaborated with the client’s internal teams and external specialists to design a secure, regulation-compliant multi-cloud infrastructure built on Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Every design decision was shaped by FINMA’s requirements - data sovereignty, audit rights, performance benchmarks - from the first principle rather than retrofitted at the end. Rather than a disruptive big-bang migration, Gradion designed a hybrid operational framework that allowed legacy systems to continue running alongside the new cloud environments throughout the transition. This approach enabled the client to maintain performance and compliance at every stage of a 5 to 7 year migration roadmap, with built-in capacity for course correction as technology and regulation evolved. To address the organizational readiness challenge, Gradion designed an in-house training and certification program that equipped internal teams with the cloud skills and operational mindset needed to own and run the future system. The goal was to leave the client self-sufficient - not dependent on an external partner for ongoing operations.