TD announced that it has accelerated its move to establish an enterprise-level data estate on Microsoft Azure on Jan. 26.
The new move, now including a multi-year agreement with AI data management provider Databricks, will “enhance analytical capabilities to help power new customer experiences,” TD said in its announcement. Databrick’s Delta Lake open format storage layer will facilitate scalable, governed and secure management across TD’s data lake.
“Banking is one of the most data-intense industries in the world. Using Azure as its primary cloud platform across all lines of business including their data estate, TD will be able to derive critical and real-time business decisions and unlock new transformative customer insights to build the bank of the future,” said Kevin Peesker, president of Microsoft Canada, in the press release.
A data estate is the underlying infrastructure that manages a company’s data. It’s an umbrella term that covers many applications, including proprietary apps, social, and CRM. Similarly broad is its deployment; data estates can be deployed on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid environment.
A solid data estate acts as the foundation to meaningful analytics, especially for a data-rich industry like banking. By providing fast and secure access to data, banks can achieve accurate and immediate analytics, enabling faster decision-making based on the insights.
“At TD, our data and analytics capabilities are central to innovating for our customers in new and meaningful ways,” said Jeff Martin, senior vice-president of corporate platforms at TD Bank Group in the press release. “By consolidating our data onto the Microsoft Azure cloud platform and leveraging Databricks, we are further enhancing and evolving the customer experience and supporting new product development.”
In an email statement, Microsoft told the publication that this expansion builds on a longstanding strategic relationship between the two companies.
TD’s plan to use Azure as the foundation for its technology and design teams extends all the way back to April 2019. It has deployed Office 365 for more than 85,000 of its employees.