Cockroach Labs partners with PwC for regulatory offering
The UK wing of PwC has been selected for a partnership with Cockroach Labs, aimed at reducing risks, costs, and complexities associated with regulatory compliance and mainframe modernisation. The collaboration will provide solutions to banks and financial institutions, as they contend with new rules around operational resiliency, business continuity, and data sovereignty.
"Designing for operational resilience is paramount as significant regulatory headwinds underscore the importance of multi-cloud and multi-region platforms," said Jon Maskery, Cloud Transformation and Payments Leader, PwC UK. "We view Cockroach as more than just another database within a crowded market. It provides our clients with a critical solution to reduce regulatory risks associated with data sovereignty, operational resilience, and cloud transformation."
Cockroach Labs is a software company focused on database technology. It looks to deliver solutions to run mission-critical workloads for the world's most important businesses, with clients including Form3, Hard Rock Digital, and Shipt, Fortune 50 global financial institutions as well as retail and media industry leaders. In particular, the firm’s cloud native distributed SQL database, CockroachDB, is helping firms to change how they manage their data – and with a host of new regulations relating to that for financial players, that offers up major opportunities.
To that end, Cockroach Labs’ partnership with PwC will focus on developing end-to-end solutions that improve operational resilience, particularly in light of stringent EU regulations and recent guidelines from the Bank of England's Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA). One front on which this will be an important step is data sovereignty, which remains a complex issue due to varying global privacy rules and regulatory approaches.
Recent regulatory developments include the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), which mandates that financial institutions across the EU must ensure their IT systems are robust enough to withstand severe disruptions. And the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) guidelines have also set new standards for operational resilience, highlighting the necessity for firms to address concentration risks and develop comprehensive business continuity plans.
Looking ahead, PwC UK aims to assist global firms in navigating these challenges by providing strategies that align with evolving data sovereignty regulations. CockroachDB’s multi-region and hybrid deployment capabilities are intended to help organisations comply with diverse data residency requirements. At the same time, the partnership will help organisations avail themselves of new technology, by supporting efforts for mainframe modernisation.
"Legacy modernisation initiatives have regained momentum as cost optimization and unlocking siloed on-premises data for Gen-AI readiness have been elevated to executive boardroom discussions," added Allen Terleto, head of global partners and ecosystem, Cockroach Labs. "Our strategic collaboration with PwC UK provides comprehensive business and technology solutions across a broad range of financial services including banks struggling with mainframe modernisation, payment systems mitigating operational resiliency risk, and cross-border fintechs challenged by data sovereignty regulations."