success story

From legacy to agility: Boosting efficiency with DevOps automation in a major U.K. bank

Virtusa was approached by one of the U.K.’s largest banks to resolve challenges in their ‘route to live’ caused by a monolithic deployment, manual processes, and outdated practices, leading to inefficiencies and high costs. The lack of agility and slow time to market for new products were major concerns. Virtusa conducted a thorough assessment to understand the challenges and proposed a tailored solution. Using our global experience and best practices, we implemented the plan and provided engineering support to client teams, enabling the adoption of new processes and tools for lasting transformation.

Ensure that you open the links to enable the Next button, assuming you have read all the documents.
Okay & NextClick to Next
The Challenge

The bank faced the following challenges stemming from a monolithic architecture and fragmented toolchain, which led to slow-release cycles and inefficient risk management:

  • Monolithic architecture and dependent deployment artefacts: The bank's monolithic deployment structure, coupled with interdependent deployment artefacts, created bottlenecks that made releases complex, slow, and prone to errors.
  • Fragmented toolchain and non-scalable branching strategies: A fragmented toolchain and non-scalable branching strategies led to inefficiencies, reduced flexibility, and difficulties in managing parallel development efforts.
  • Lack of automation and quality gates: The limited use of automation, quality gates, and security processes slowed development and testing, leading to increased manual intervention and higher risks.
  • Slow release cycles and manual testing: Release cycles extended up to 24 weeks, with manual testing during the system integration testing (SIT) phase taking up to eight weeks, significantly delaying the time to market for new features and updates.
  • Inefficient risk management and late end-to-end (E2E) testing focus: Manual risk management and a delayed emphasis on E2E testing led to issues being identified late in the process, resulting in defects being discovered post-release.
  • Limited API versioning and test automation coverage: The lack of proper API versioning and insufficient test automation coverage caused compatibility issues, slower testing, and increased defect leakage, including regulatory defects.
The Solution

We implemented a thorough transformation plan that helped the client address key challenges:

  • Cloud infrastructure and automation: We automated cloud infrastructure deployment by implementing Azure landing zone provisioning and infrastructure as code, enabling faster delivery through automated DevOps continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines on Azure.
  • Microservices architecture and engineering efficiency: We transitioned to a microservices-based architecture, using reusable frameworks to improve scalability and increase engineering productivity.
  • Cost optimization and data security: We employed Azure Cost Management to control spending while ensuring secure access control to sensitive data.
  • Agile transformation and new ways of working: We led an Agile transformation focused on collaboration, automated governance, and streamlined approval workflows, enhancing operational efficiency and speed.
  • Cloud strategy and mindset shift: We drove a shift in mindset toward SaaS > PaaS > IaaS, optimizing the cloud adoption strategy.
  • Test automation and quality engineering: We implemented a multilayer test automation strategy, incorporating a shift-left approach for component integration testing, supported by quality engineering (QE) transformation to detect issues early.
  • Data virtualization and app resilience: We utilized Delphix for data virtualization and conducted app resilience testing to ensure high-performing, robust applications.
Boosting efficiency with DevOps automation - Solution
The Benefit

By implementing a streamlined and automated approach to their processes, the client experienced the following benefits:

  • 80% reduction in full-stack environment provisioning time: By streamlining and automating the environment provisioning process, deployment times were drastically reduced, enabling faster project turnaround.
  • No expertise required for infrastructure provisioning: The process was simplified to the point where specialized knowledge was no longer necessary, empowering teams to handle infrastructure setup independently and efficiently.
  • <5% defect escape rate: A minimal defect escape rate was achieved with a focus on quality control, leading to fewer post-release issues and enhanced overall product reliability.
Discover how DevSecOps can elevate your operations.

Virtusa’s comprehensive Enterprise DevSecOps solutions are designed to address critical pain points in your engineering journey.

Learn more Click to Learn more
Related content