A Path through the Cloud: Saving PrivatBank's IT Operations during the War in Ukraine

In response to the imminent threat posed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, PrivatBank executed an emergency migration of its IT infrastructure to Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, relocating critical systems out of Ukraine to ensure continuity of operations. Russian forces had just started bombarding the area near the bank's main data center. This rapid migration, completed in just 43 days, involved moving 3500 servers and establishing cloud operations capable of handling 25 million transactions per hour. Despite the achievement, the migration resulted in significant costs, amounting to nearly $4 million monthly. PrivatBank faced a strategic decision: continue optimizing the cloud setup to reduce costs and leverage cloud benefits, or revert some operations to its modernized, but underutilized, on-premise data centers as the conflict stabilized and the Russian army retreated from the areas near its data centers in Dnipro and Kyiv. The case underscores the resilience and innovation of PrivatBank's IT team amid a national crisis, highlighting the complexities of balancing operational continuity, cost management, and future strategic direction in a volatile environment.