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Discover Financial (DFS) Teams Up With IBM to Ease Digital Shift

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Discover Financial Services (DFS - Free Report) recently collaborated with International Business Machines Corporation’s (IBM - Free Report) services business IBM Consulting to accelerate the digital transformation of its present systems and applications into an open and flexible hybrid cloud architecture.

As a result of this latest move, the hybrid cloud technology provider Red Hat, acquired by IBM in 2019, will play a pivotal role in accelerating the digital transition of Discover Financial.

DFS awaits integrating the open enterprise hybrid cloud strategy, backed by a secure platform, into its systems and applications. Aiming to modernize the same, this leading digital bank and payments company will seamlessly automate, react and extend solutions to its customers.

For achieving this, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform will be utilized by DFS to bring about the hybrid cloud automation. Discover Financial will make use of Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes (ACM) to attain end-to-end management visibility and gain control over its cluster and application lifecycle in its hybrid cloud architecture.

In this manner, Red Hat-developed OpenShift will guide Discover Financial to utilize its key capabilities, comprising security, automation and multicloud service integration. This, in turn, will likely lower operational costs, improve outcomes in business processes, accelerate application deployments and gain better security and resilience for DFS.

Initiatives similar to the latest one point toward Discover Financial’s continuous efforts to sustain its position as one of the leading digital bank and payments companies. To this end, enhanced technology solutions are urgently required to improve customer experiences, thereby making the latest initiative a time opportune one.  

The timeliness of this strategic move is also noticeable amid a booming digital economy that necessitates infusion of digitization in every sphere of life. Evidently, consumers demand an accelerated access to integrated digital banking and payments and security to safeguard their confidential data. Discover Financial with a secure hybrid cloud architecture can capitalize on this prevalent scenario.   

As most companies around the world are consistently pursuing digital transformation efforts to stay abreast with the growing digital trend, DFS is been no exception to this. Apart from using in-house resources, Discover Financial frequently resorted to third-party vendors for technology services related to cloud, telecommunications, hardware and operating systems. The latest development bears testament to the same.

The alliance is likely to contribute to the sound performance of DFS’ digital banking and payment services businesses as well as provide an impetus to its overall margins in the days ahead.

Shares of Discover Financial have gained 16.6% in a year compared with the industry’s rally of 2.9%. DFS currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

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Stocks to Consider

Some better-ranked stocks in the finance space are Virtu Financial, Inc. (VIRT - Free Report) and Enova International, Inc. (ENVA - Free Report) , each currently sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Virtu Financial’s earnings surpassed estimates in three of the last four quarters and missed the mark once, the average surprise being 24.76%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for VIRT’s 2022 earnings has moved 21.9% north in the past 60 days. Virtu Financial has a Growth Score of B.

The bottom line of Enova surpassed estimates in each of the trailing four quarters, the average being 48.58%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for ENVA’s 2022 earnings has moved 3.6% north in the past 30 days. Enova has a Value Score of A.

Shares of Virtu Financial and Enova have gained 19.4% and 5%, respectively, in a year.

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