French IT giant Atos has signed a five and a half year agreement with German regional bank National-Bank AG to provide it with IT infrastructure and data center services.

Under the terms of the contract, Atos will transfer the bank’s operations to its own data centers in Frankurt. 

Delegating 

atos-headquarters
– Atos

The National-Bank states the partnership will allow it to be more flexible as it attempts to satisfy changing IT requirements, while meeting Germany’s stringent data security laws.

Thomas Stephan, National-Bank’s head of banking operations, said: “Thanks to this collaboration with Atos, we benefit from a secure, high-performance and trouble-free operation of our data center infrastructure.

“The management of our applications deliberately stays in-house. Our IT department is therefore prepared for upcoming challenges and also a company of our size can benefit from scale effects.”

Germany is notoriously tough when it comes to data sovereignty. Its laws were updated earlier this year to comply with the EU’s upcoming General Data Protection Regulation, a step up from the country’s existing Federal Data Protection Act.

The latter is more severe than GDPR in that it stipulates that knowingly transferring non-public data  to a third party or a large number of people for business purposes is punishable by imprisonment.