ANDICOM 2026 will bring together technology companies, government representatives, academics and business leaders in Cartagena from September 1–4 to discuss how artificial intelligence is moving from experimentation into practical applications for productivity, competitiveness and economic development. The congress, organized by CINTEL (Centro de Innovación, Productividad y Desarrollo Tecnológico, or Center for Innovation, Productivity and Technological Development), will take place under the theme “Unleashing the Power of AI.”

The 41st edition of the event will open on September 1 with the ANDICOM Knowledge Hub 2026 – Business Impact Sessions, followed by the Main Academic Forum from September 2–4. The European Union will participate as guest of honor, while Colombia’s national government and executives from global technology companies including Fortinet, Zoho Corporation, Microsoft, Blend360, Google Cloud and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are expected to contribute to the agenda.

“The conversation about artificial intelligence has evolved. Today organizations no longer ask what this technology can do, but how to apply it to increase productivity, strengthen competitiveness, improve decision-making and generate sustainable advantages,” – Mario Castaño, technical director of CINTEL.

The European Union’s participation will focus on artificial intelligence as infrastructure for economic development and digital transformation. According to ANDICOM, the bloc represents 22% of foreign direct investment in Colombia’s technology sector, has generated more than 120,000 jobs through European companies operating in the country and will bring together representatives from its 27 member states during the congress. “ANDICOM will be the stage where global leaders share experiences, real cases and strategies to turn that potential into concrete results.” promised Mario Castaño.

The event’s academic program will focus on four strategic areas: artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and digital trust, connectivity and digital infrastructure, and public policy and regulation. Discussions will cover topics including AI adoption, automation, advanced analytics, data platforms, digital talent, sustainability, digital government and the future of work.

The opening day will also feature the CINTEL AI Forum, which will examine governance and responsible adoption of AI agents, as well as the CyberShield Forum, focused on cybersecurity challenges linked to the development of quantum technologies and Colombia’s transition toward post-quantum cryptography.

Confirmed speakers include Derek Manky, chief security strategist at Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT), who will discuss how artificial intelligence is changing the cybersecurity landscape through autonomous attacks, deepfakes and emerging digital threats.

Raju Vegesna, chief evangelist at Zoho Corporation, will address digital sovereignty and the changing relationship between companies, governments and technology platforms. Marc Reguera, worldwide customer engagement general manager at Microsoft Fabric, will discuss how organizations can use AI and data analytics to improve decision-making and create business value.

The agenda will also involve Andrés Barrantes, regional vice president for Latin America at Blend360, an Amazon Web Services Premier Partner, who will examine strategies for using artificial intelligence to monetize data, optimize costs and improve competitiveness.

Pilar Manchón, senior director of AI research strategy at Google Cloud, will share perspectives on AI research and innovation, while Eric Martorell Bouvier, director of artificial intelligence solutions for Latin America and southern Europe at Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Servicelab AI, will discuss enterprise adoption of AI solutions.

Alongside the Main Academic Forum, the Experience Hub will provide demonstrations of technology solutions and innovations developed by participating companies, creating a connection between business needs, technological capabilities and investment opportunities.

The complete agenda is available through the ANDICOM agenda page.

Organized annually by CINTEL, ANDICOM has become one of Latin America’s largest technology and business gatherings, bringing together executives, public officials, investors, academics and technology providers to examine the role of digital transformation in the region’s economy.

Headline phot: Andicom on Day 2 in Nueva Granada salon. (Photo shared by Clicksalinas Photographer)

The winners were selected from 16 finalists during the LATAM Region Seedstars World competition, which bills itself as the largest seed-stage startup competition for emerging markets. The contenders were selected and named at the Seedstars Summit LATAM in Medellin Colombia November 27th to 29th.

Selected companies:

1. Ribon, Brazil, donation platform for millennials
2. Mynkana, Ecuador, the uber of market research.
3. Mesa, Chile, bringing diners to restaurants at off-peak times
4. Evimed, Uruguay, online education for medical professionals
5. Ruedata, Colombia, data analytics to boost efficiency in bus and truck fleets
6. Afinidata, Guatemala, the smart early childhood tutor
7. Pixdea, Costa Rica, education through VR classroom programs
8. Manzana Verde, Peru, a subscription service for healthy meals
9. Baubap, Mexico, a financial inclusion platform
   

   Colombian Surfing Champion & motivational speaker Freddy Marimón has won multiple gold medals even though he has no legs.

More than just an entrepreneur’s conference, the Seedstars Summit LATAM was an opportunity for all stakeholders involved to network, gain knowledge, and build relationships with investors. For the first time, the event was open to other startups outside of the SSW competition including the Seedstars & Apps.co Expansion Program delegation of 10 Colombian startups in the process of internationalization.

Prior to the main Summit day, 35 participating startups completed an intensive growth Bootcamp at Medellin’s municipal incubator Ruta N, focused on scaling up their businesses, followed by the Investor Forum at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (UPB) sponsored by Amazon. The startups had over 150 one-to-one meetings with recognized local and international mentors and investors such as Brazil’s Monashees, Mexico’s Redwood Ventures, Washington DC based Village Capital and others.

November 29 was designated Summit Day, when the startups delivered 3-minute pitches on the main stage in front of more than 350 hand-picked ecosystem builders, corporates, investors, and startup enthusiasts representing some of the most prominent names of tech and entrepreneurship in Latin America. The Summit also featured workshops and speakers from global and regional companies, like Hubspot, Procolombia, Orlando Reyes (Co-Founder at Wisy) and Colombian surfing champion Freddy Marimon.

“I was impressed by the quality and diversity of startups looking for solutions in Latin America, the diversity of the sector was also pleasantly surprising,”—Anna Raptis, founder of Amplifica Capital.

“The Seedstars event in Medellin brought the most important agents for entrepreneurship in Latin America together. It was incredible to see new and old faces forming part of this ecosystem of knowledge and experience.” Said  Rafael Obando from HubspotSponsors included Ruta N, the Swiss Embassy of Colombia, Avianca, Amazon AWS, ISA and the UPB, with the media support of France24, & Entrepreneur .All photos courtesy of Seedstars

An AWS edge location allows local and regional users high performance access to AWS resources by caching data in the AWS CloudFront Content Distribution Network (CDN), increasing throughput to AWS cloud services such as AWS Web Application Firewall, and increasing performance when accessing AWS hosted resources, such as websites hosted on Amazon EC2 or Lightsail.

The announcement was made at the Amazon AWS Public Sector Summit held in Bogotá’s Agorá convention center during an on-stage discussion between Colombian President Ivan Duque and Amazon AWS Public Sector regional director for Canada, Latin America & The Caribbean Jeffrey Kratz.

Above photo: Colombian President Ivan Duque With Jeffrey Kratz, Amazon AWS public sector regional director for Canada, Latin America and The Caribbean at the 1st Amazon AWS Public Sector Summit held in Colombia. Photo credit: Efraín Herrera- Presidencia de la República

Kratz cited contributions by Amazon AWS to Medellín’s ESU high-tech public security monitoring system, Amazon’s opening of a multilingual customer service center in Colombia in 2018, and regional Amazon AWS sales offices in Bogotá.

“Many congratulations on the announcements you just made,” said Colombian President Ivan Duque on stage at the summit. “They make us feel very proud to be Colombians: this work with SENA to train 2,000 new technicians in cloud computing services; The support for infrastructure development, and, above all, for being part of the effort to achieve that massive and important generation of employment to position Colombia as a technology hub, which is the bet we all have made. Thank you very much.”

There have long been rumors that Amazon’s retail operation will at some point open its consumer retail operations in Colombia, as it has done already elsewhere in Latin America, namely Brazil and Mexico. The opening of a 600 seat Amazon customer service center in Colombia to serve retail (Amazon.com as opposed to AWS cloud) customers did nothing to silence these rumors. Still, no new information was forthcoming on Amazon AWS’s retail parent.

On the other hand, opening of an AWS edge location in Colombia may pave the way for increased investment, such as an additional Latin America AWS Region (cluster of data centers). Such expansion would be strategic to AWS Latin America growth, as Colombia is “electronically” (measured by latency) closer to Amazon’s US East regions in Columbus, Ohio and Northern Virginia than it is to Amazon’s Sao Paulo, Brazil region. This is due in part to the fact that Colombia has more extensive undersea fiber connectivity with the US than it does with neighboring Brazil, and connectivity with Brazil is maritime (through the Atlantic Ocean) instead of terrestrial, which would mean cutting through the Colombian and Brazilian Amazon rain forest.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has become one of the dominant providers and its reach now spans virtually the entire globe. The demand has grown so much in Latin America that the company recently opened a physical office in Colombia to further service its many customers on the ground.

To learn more about AWS operations in the country, Finance Colombia Executive Editor Loren Moss recently spoke with Marcos Grilanda, who oversees the companies Latin American business everywhere except for Brazil and Mexico.

“We had customers in Colombia even before we started operations in Latin America.” – Marcos Grilanda

They sat down together last month in Cartagena at Andicom 2017, the largest ICT conference in Colombia, to talk about Amazon Web Services coming to Colombia and how cloud services are growing in the region.

Loren Moss: Amazon Web Services recently opened up an office here in Colombia in Bogotá. Can you tell me what prompted that? What made Amazon think that now is the right time as far as expansion here into Latin America?

Marcos Grilanda: Just recalling a little bit of history, Amazon Services started a little more than 10 years ago, and in Latin America we started a little bit more than five years ago. We are continuously expanding our business.

From last year to this year we decided to keep up this pace and we opened two offices: one here in Colombia, based in Bogotá, and in parallel we opened in Santiago, Chile. It’s part of our expansion plan. The main reason is to keep closer to our customers and partners, although it is not the case that we just started having customers in Colombia. We had customers in Colombia even before we started operations in Latin America, because as you know, anyone could open the website and start using Amazon Services from any part of the world.

So before we were here, we already had customers. We have many customers down here in Colombia — some of them are already public, like Sura, a big, big Colombian insurance company. And we have the National University of Colombia, which has over 50,000 students, and also Deltacloud for some systems. In finance, we would also talk about Bancolombia, about NEQUI — a very important application. Now you can send money between mobile phones based on Amazon Services.

So, this is a trend that we are seeing in all Latin American countries, and Colombia is no different. We are seeing an adoption that is increasing in speed. The pace of adoption is increasing pretty fast from different industries of different sizes.

Loren Moss: Amazon has really invested in promoting businesses — not just large businesses, but small businesses. I was at an event at Ruta N in Medellin, and Amazon rolled out an offer to a lot of the startups and the tech companies that were there. It seems like those people — the innovators, the entrepreneurs — get it. But in a general sense, have the obstacles been any different here in Latin America than, say, in North America or Europe in terms of adopting and getting people to embrace the cloud paradigm?

Marcos Grilanda: Well, first, just to emphasize, the program that you mentioned about startups is a really important program. We are a strong supporter of startup business. They are pretty important customers to us. A startup that has already received an investment from a venture capital or an accelerator can apply to have $100,000 USD in credits.

“I wouldn’t say that one country is different to another. I would say that the verticals are different.” – Marcos Grilanda

On your question about if I’m seeing that Latin America is different, I wouldn’t say that one country is different to another. I would say that the verticals are different.

We started talking about startups. Startups start their businesses in the cloud. There is no other option. They don’t even think about starting a business with the traditional IT environment and say, “OK, I’m going to buy a bunch of servers or storage because I want to start a business.” They just don’t think about it.

I was talking with a startup last November at our annual event that’s called re:Invent, and the startup was saying, “Well, I’ve used Amazon Services for a long time and I love their infrastructure. For example, the database.” Amazon has a service that’s called RDS: Relational Database Service. A managed database.
So, they say, “You know what? I don’t have a DBA [database administrator] anymore.” They’re doing other stuff. It’s not the case that they’re firing people. They’re doing other stuff that is more important to the business. And another startup said “I never had a DBA.”

If we go to another area — for example, e-commerce — it’s a real adopter of cloud computing because of the trends that they need to adapt themselves to things like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or Christmas. All that requires a lot of power to deliver to the final customer. You know, you need a strong environment.

We have a very important customer in Latin America that is called VTex, an e-commerce platform that has over 1,500 commerce places below their platform. They’re have very well-known customers on their platform — such as Samsung, for example— and during a “Hot Sale” on a given Monday, they can increase their IT environment to about 20 times more capacity to deliver to the final customer during a day. After that they just decrease the capacity that they’re using and keep the business.

Retailers are doing great business on analyzing all the data that we have. Big Data projects are popping up, and  now evolving pretty quickly. Standard industries are moving pretty fast on ERP adoption, from very small customers to very large companies that run SAP. In Brazil, we have an iron producing company, and they move their SAP environment in production to run on AWS.

So, it’s not a matter of the country. It’s more a matter of the type of industry that we are talking about. Finance, for example. Banks are usually a little behind on adoption because they have some more regulations to follow. They have some more issues that they need to solve. But all around the world — and in Latin America it’s no different — we are seeing banks quickly adopting cloud computing.

We talked about NEQUI. That is part of Bancolombia, but we could talk about a bank in Peru, that is BCP, or a bank in Chile, that is BCI, or a bank in Argentina, that is Comafi. So, it’s not a matter of the country. It’s much more a matter of the industry — the pace at which each industry is adopting cloud computing.

Loren Moss: Amazon has a program that gives startups credit to help get launched — some educational credits and some support credits. Are you seeing that these companies are finding a reception as far as getting traction in the marketplace and getting traction in the wider business
community? What are you seeing from the vantage point of a prime service provider for a lot of these startups that we see down here in Latin America? I think that you had mentioned some of the companies that we even use here in Colombia are using AWS to scale and to grow. How is that from your perspective?

“Getting access to technology is not a differentiator anymore because a small company of two guys inside a garage can access the same technology that a global corporation can access.” – Marcos Grilanda

Marcos Grilanda: We’re glad to serve those customers that can’t access the same technology that big corporations can access. Cloud computing can do this for the market, you know? Getting access to technology is not a differentiator anymore because a small company of two guys inside a garage can access the same technology that a global corporation can access at the same moment. The same technology is available.

The difference is how much of it they’re going to use. So, this is a true democracy of technology. We are glad to give access to that, and we are not only giving credits to those companies. We are also giving them office hours. We have our technical team to support them on how to put their solution over our platform so as not to lose focus on their final business — what is truly important.

And we are glad to hear a lot of stories from around Latin America of companies that were very successful, not only through technology, but also for entering the market pretty quickly by adopting cloud computing with Amazon Services. For example, Nubank, a credit card company based down in Brazil, has 500,000 customers. There is another 500,000 waiting for the credit card. And those guys — a Colombian entrepreneur — initiated the business in seven months. Seven months from conception to going to market.

Loren Moss: Where does Amazon fit in this ecosystem? With the growth, where do you see things in two or three years in the wider IT ecosystem, and really as far as Amazon’s footprint and stance, here in Colombia and Latin America more generally?

Marcos Grilanda: First of all, this cloud business is just starting. We are in the very early stages of the full potential. It’s safe to say that in the future, it’s going to be pretty hard to find a company that is not using cloud. So, we believe that the majority of companies will run, almost in totality, on cloud computing.

Of course, to get there, there is a path that we call the “journey.” The journey to the cloud. And this starts by selecting an application, or a website, or a Big Data project, or a disaster recovery site. Something that is meaningful but is not that critical to start with. To start proving the cloud. To being “getting” the future about cloud computing.

And then you pass through the hybrid environment. For most traditional companies, we pass through the hybrid environment where they can connect directly to our data center even, if necessary, without passing through the internet. We can offer the service to connect directly to our data centers and then start migrating on a larger scale. And in the end the majority of their services and applications are based on cloud computing with Amazon Services.

“We offer customers a huge amount of solutions. We have 90 families of solutions. Last year, we launched 1,017 different features.” – Marcos Grilanda

This is what we understand that is going to happen with the market and we are seeing this evolving very quickly. And why? Because it’s good for the customer. It’s good for the company itself. You can save costs by doing that.

We reduced our costs 62 times in 10 years — to everyone that’s using the product. You don’t have to call anyone. You don’t need to do anything. If you are using the product that had its cost reduced, you receive the benefit.

We give customers the potential of scalability. You can increase the number of servers, your storage, your users in a given time. And afterward you can reduce that when you don’t use it anymore.

We offer customers a huge amount of solutions. We have 90 families of solutions. Last year, we launched 1,017 different features. It’s more or less three per day. The year before, we launched 722, and the interesting point is: 90% of that is based on customers’ feedback.

Loren Moss: It’s impressive because I know that there’s a podcast that AWS puts out — and I listen to it — and every week they’re going through the new features, and it’s a challenge to try to keep up with that. It’s great to see a lot of these products that would be deployed in Latin America much more slowly, but because they’re deployed over the cloud, they’re available as soon as they’re available, practically speaking, in the U.S. You don’t have to wait for a company to set up infrastructure down here. I can log in, and I can get the service and bypass 18,000 different bureaucratic steps.

Marcos Grilanda: It’s available at the same moment that it’s launched. Because everywhere in the world you can access it, and make use of it.

The country head of the telecommunications company and network provider was joined by Loren Moss, executive editor of Finance Colombia, to talk about the growth of connectivity in Colombia. While Guerrero expects growth in all aspects of the private sector, they specifically discuss how the demand is increasing in the financial sector and the need for greater security.

The following conversation, during the recent Asobancaria banking conference in Colombia, highlights the growth of the digital world and why Level 3 decided to expand its network by adding a cable on the Pacific coast of the nation.

Loren Moss: So earlier this year in Bogotá, I was at an event and learned you have an alliance with Amazon.

Luis Carlos Guerrero: Yes, we see that the future will be one based on the cloud in terms of processing, computing, storage, and the rest and those services — all supported by very good connectivity. So we’re betting on those clients.

There are clouds of different kinds, so concepts appear — like Office 365, for example — and clients need a good, quality response for their users who are far away from those clouds. So what we do is come to agreements with Microsoft, with Amazon, with Google, with IBM, and with others, and we make a direct connection from their public clouds to our clients all over the world. That improves the user experience very much.

Let me explain: If a client has Office 365 for corporate, his users would have to go to internet to get to that content and those applications. With us, what we do is make a direct connection from his offices — wherever they are, whether in Medellín, Bogotá, or anywhere in the world — to Microsoft’s cloud. The user experience improves very much.

That’s what we do as well with Amazon. That’s the first agreement we have made with these companies that have public clouds.

Loren Moss: Interesting. You at Level 3 have a data center here in Bogotá and elsewhere in Colombia, correct?

Luis Carlos Guerrero: Yeah, we have a data center on 170th Street in Bogota, we have another data center in Bogota, and we have a data center in Cali.

Loren Moss: And you already have several fiber-optic connections to the “backbone” of the internet as they say. What is the connectivity like here in Colombia?

Luis Carlos Guerrero: I think the connectivity in Colombia is pretty good, and the future looks good. The majority of cables, with the exception of ours, are in the Caribbean.

The Caribbean is not an ocean, it is a sea of shallow waters where smuggled goods go in and out. So those cables are exposed to the risk of being broken by a falling anchor, or when they’re raising it, getting tangled up and broken. It has happened in the past in Costa Rica.

In Colombia, because the waters are shallow, the ships don’t get into the ports but rather stay far offshore. So we decided several years ago that it was worth the trouble to have an alternative without that risk on the Pacific coast. Our cable there goes down to a depth of 3,400 meters.

Loren Moss: Wow! That’s a big difference. A super-big difference!

Luis Carlos Guerrero: All problems are avoided. It gives us an enormous peace of mind and security of connection for the different uses that both businesspeople and the man-in-the-street require.

We decided that it should be Cali, an important city in Colombia with an opening to the Pacific. That cable, which comes from Panama, comes in close to Buenaventura. And it comes in to Cali, it goes on to Lima, it goes into Chile, it crosses the mountain range into Argentina, it goes into Brazil twice, and comes back out again in the Atlantic towards the United States. In Panama, it goes in towards Miami on one side, and it goes towards the Pacific and on to California.

Colombia is a becoming more and more of a “multilatina” country. So the connectivity with Chile is perfect. The connectivity with Peru is great. There is an enormous number of transactions between those countries, but also with Central America. The cable also goes to Costa Rica.

Loren Moss: How do you find the demand for connectivity, especially in the financial sector here in Colombia? What is growth like?

Luis Carlos Guerrero: Modern companies make us depend more on technology and less on people. Banks, in one way or another, now talk about digital banking, digitalization of the banking industry, fewer offices attending to people and more services online. There is more automation.

As far as that is happening, it is in our favor. It is in our favor because that means more data by means of the network. That means better connectivity is needed between the branch offices of a bank and its head offices where the processing capacities are. That means giving wider bandwidth to the branches, and that means having more automatic teller machines.

Nowadays, businessmen are aware that connectivity, good communications, computing capacities, and applications — rather than being an expense — are a way of saving money. Because the procedures are simpler and fewer people involved. There is more automation, and that means the client does his transactions without needing almost anybody.

Loren Moss: We have seen many high-profile cyberattacks of late. There was the worldwide ransomware attack. We have seen the interbank system SWIFT hacked or violated several times. What is the demand for connectivity providers like Level 3 with security? What solutions or innovations does Level 3 offer? If I’m a bank and a Level 3 client, how can you help us to better protect our systems that run through the Level 3 network?

Luis Carlos Guerrero: OK. Two concepts. One, the companies see that these facts are unfortunately getting more and more important day by day. So for years now, we have had a plan to make sure that the backbone of the company is able to support all of that.

Second, the attacks are not so frequent in Latin America. We have seen them in Ecuador, we have seen them in Colombia, and our technologies operate correctly. But toward the future, we have plans for much more important equipment, both because both the clients’ traffic requires it and because we have a security area that allows us to offer security services, and our knowledge and our network capacity.

For example, often the “bad guys,” as I call them — the hackers — set out to do what they call a “synchronized attack” on a financial or commercial entity’s network. They often coordinate it on the worst possible dates, usually on a Friday, at the end of the month, or on that entity’s busiest traffic in transactions. They usually start at 9:00 or 10:00 am in the morning and the attack lasts until 6:00 in the afternoon.

So, with the network capacity that we have, can detect that attack. Those attacks come from all over the world. If they came from just one place, it would be very easy to block them at their origin. But since they come from so many places and there is just one network, we detect the attack and we confirm it with the client that it’s not a promotion, for example, or something like that.

Loren Moss: Not, like, unusual traffic from a Black Friday deal or something like that?

Luis Carlos Guerrero: Right. We confirm that with the client. And then, all that traffic that is coming in, we divert it to some cleansing points. We clean it up and we hand over to the client the traffic that they should be getting.

Loren Moss: Traffic analysis. Impressive. Generally, Level 3 is a worldwide, global company — one of the biggest and oldest companies that offers these services. What is the importance of a country like Colombia for a worldwide company like Level 3?

Luis Carlos Guerrero: Level 3 has worldwide coverage. We have nine operations on Latin America, including Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, and Venezuela. And all those contribute, first of all, to the concept of a global network that we want to transmit to our corporate clients.

And second of all, we have had an excellent client base in Colombia for more than 20 years, since 1992. We have clients that have stayed with us for 25 years in Cali, in Medellín, in Bogotá, and on the coast. Clients that we have seen transform and grow. We have really worked very closely with them and our products have been evolving based on the needs that we feel they have.

The Seattle-based company reportedly plans to build a local team of account executives, solution architects, and support staff, among other positions, to further win business in what it calls a growing market.

Already, the firm lists Publicar, Bancolombia, and Infovalmer among the customers it currently provides with cloud-related services in Colombia. It also counts the Colombian Institution for the Evaluation of Education (ICFES), an agency within the nation’s Ministry of Education, as a client.

Photo: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos continues to expand his empire with a second Amazon Web Services office opening in Latin America. (Credit: Amazon)

In a statement, Amazon Web Services highlighted the “growing demand and acceleration of cloud computing services” in the country and said its goal will be “supporting Colombian clients on the path to adoption and transformation.”

Colombian officials have championed the significance of the arrival. “This is a very important vote of confidence in the country and an invitation to companies to enter the dynamics of innovation,” said Felipe Jaramillo, president of the national business promotion agency ProColombia. He added that “it opens opportunities to generate quality employment for great Colombian talent, specialized in the IT sector.”

BN Americas has reported that the company may soon open an office in Chile as well.

Outside of Brazil, Amazon Web Services also maintains availability zones for its infrastructure in five other locations in the Americas: Northern California, Ohio, Oregon, Northern Virginia, and Central Canada.

Its other geographic regions across the world include Germany, Ireland, China, India, Japan, Australia, Korea, and Singapore.

To illustrate the benefits of moving towards more online, digital operations, the bank notes that its transaction load has jumped from 90 million per day in 2006 to nearly 550 million today. “In 2017 they will be prepared to manage one billion transactions a day in real time, confirming BBVA’s swift response to changes in customers’ needs and expectations,” said BBVA about its new partner in a statement.

Naturally, cloud implementation is more challenging in the financial sector than some others due to red tape. But the AWS relationship has made it easy to also work closely with regulators to ensure compliance.

“The digital transformation of our business means that our technology platforms must be prepared to face an exponential transactions growth and cloud computing technologies have much to contribute in this direction,” said Ricardo Moreno, global head of engineering at BBVA. “Working with AWS and having them accompany us on this journey — not just with their products but also with their expertise — will accelerate our transformation.”

In addition to expanding its use of AWS cloud ecosystem — which BBVA had been using to run its analytics application for retailers its “Commerce 360” program — the partnership will lead to the creation of what is being called its Cloud Community. This will be used to improve knowledge sharing while enhancing security, other standard, and compliance.

For AWS, it sees the agreement as highly beneficial to its goal of further expanding in the banking world. It plans to take the feedback and lessons learned from BBVA to tweak its offering to other financial services firms.

“We are thrilled to be working with BBVA, one of the world’s leading innovators in the financial sector,” said Mike Clayville of Amazon Web Services. “By using the AWS Cloud, financial organizations can drive innovation while maintaining high levels of security, compliance and data privacy. We are excited to continue helping BBVA on its transformation journey and supporting them to drive innovation for their end customers.”