WHY BANK ON DEVOPS? HOW DEVOPS ADOPTION ACCELERATES DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION, IMPROVES COMPLIANCE AND UNLOCKS THE TRUE VALUE OF LEGACY SYSTEMS - ECS
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Why Bank on
DevOps?
How DevOps adoption accelerates digital
transformation, improves compliance and
unlocks the true value of legacy systems
ecs.co.uk
Foreword
Contents
Introduction ........................................... 3
Ensuring regulatory
compliance with DevOps ................ 4
Automate testing to save
time and money.................................... 6
Unlocking the value of
legacy systems ...................................... 8
Why banks need to
change their culture ......................... 10 “Traditional banks need to innovate to survive. The threat of
challenger banks has been overtaken by the threat of GAFA
Reaping the rewards of (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple) who have even greater
outsourced functions ........................12
scale and customer data; they operate at an unrivalled scale,
Aligning operations and with a significant and complex legacy estate and, invariably,
development functions....................13 multiple outsource partners. In addition, the volume and
complexity of regulation is ever-increasing; and regulations such
Conclusion ..............................................14 as Open Banking are making FinTechs even more dangerous. In
About ECS ...............................................15 addition, they operate at an.
The perception that DevOps is too difficult to introduce for
traditional banks is absolutely untrue. We know because, at
ECS Digital, we’ve had great success helping several high street
banks adopt DevOps.
Here, we’re pleased to share the results of our experiences; the
hows and the whys of adopting DevOps in the financial sector.”
Andy Cureton
Digital Engineering Director
ECS
2 Why Bank on DevOps?
Introduction
There has never been a more challenging time to be
The world is changing:
CIO of a big bank. Disruption from digital innovation is
“Banks are facing into three
hitting everyone hard… structural challenges in
technology that have been
building over the last 10 to
Externally, on one side, there are threats issues, including modernising legacy
15 years. First, the loss of their
from nimble Challenger banks who systems without additional risk.
engineering capabilities. Second,
boast smaller, easier to manage product
no habit of dealing with technical
sets and on another, there are a host Real-world solutions
debt and automating the
of regulatory changes, including GDPR Backed by expert commentary from technology estate relentlessly.
and Open Banking. And ahead, lies the former CIO of Lloyds Banking Group Third, their IT service providers
looming spectre of GAFA (Google, Apple, (LBG) Digital, Jonathan Webster and and partners who have many of
Facebook and Amazon), Digital/DevOps Programme Lead at Royal Bank of the same challenges. To address
unicorns with immense worldwide Scotland, Gary Peterson, we explore these challenges requires bold
customer scale and data. Internally, in detail: moves and imagination.”
many CIOs face the internal challenge Jonathan Webster
of updating legacy technologies and • How DevOps helps to focus both Former CIO, Lloyds Banking Group Digital
maintain the high class of service their operations and development sides of
customers expect. the business on the same goals The state of DevOps:
• How early and continuous testing ECS has created the 2017 CIO
Time is running out and, to stay makes regulatory compliance easier Guide to DevOps, identifying
relevant, today’s big banks need to achieve and maintain major CIO priorities and how
to embrace agile methodologies – • How both processes and mindsets DevOps is being used to achieve
across their entire organisation. While need to change in order to unlock them. It includes our own
many banks intend to adopt new value in legacy systems customer experiences alongside
technologies is there, the execution is • How to institute the right culture for industry research and insights
often mixed, with many businesses still DevOps and increased compliance from the CIOs of five leading
operating with a very linear or waterfall across the organisation organisations.
approach. This white paper analyses • How automation can dramatically
today’s challenges and shows how cut both development time and
DevOps can help banks address these costs. Interested in learning more about
how DevOps is being adopted?
Download our free guide at:
Industry voices
marketing.ecs.co.uk/cio-guide-
to-devops-2018
Keep your eyes open for the
Gary Peterson Jonathan Webster 2018 CIO Guide to Digital
Programme Lead, Royal Bank of Former CIO, LBG Digital Transformation!
Scotland
Jon has over 19 years’ experience in
Gary is leading transformation & IT Transformation having worked for
change across business, change some of the largest IT consultancies
management and delivery teams and financial organisations in the
within RBS. Based on principles UK. Most recently, Jon has spent the
of continuous delivery, DevOps past three years at Lloyds Banking
and enterprise-scaled agile, he is Group leading the Digital and
introducing new organisation design, Transformation agendas as CIO
software development processes and and is now a Partner & Managing
methodologies in order to deliver more Director at The Boston Consulting
customer value and high-quality IT Group.
service.
ecs.co.uk 3
Ensuring regulatory
compliance with DevOps
Competition in the banking sector has never been
Real-world experience:
greater, with battles fought against the background of a
ECS is working with a major high
street bank to optimise their fast-expanding regulatory landscape.
workflows, form a digital agenda
and improve the way they use Since the crisis of 2008, regulations have
tools such as Jenkins. The bank grown ever tougher; the scrutiny and The adoption of DevOps can
previously did quarterly releases involvement of the Financial Conduct change the risk game and integrate
for their retail system – this is Authority (FCA) has increased and The teams towards a common,
now monthly in certain areas, a Prudential Regulation Authority insists achievable goal backed by a
300% improvement. The bank’s upon a stable approach to both current considered plan of how to get there.
desire to release continuously is operations and forward- planning. It transforms regulatory changes
currently stopped by the need to Additionally, regulations are pulling in from a looming spectre into a
remain compliant with legislation different directions: a May 2018 deadline manageable part of the workstream.
and the perception that the two for Europe’s forthcoming General
are mutually exclusive. Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), DevOps pioneers
enacting stricter data management Barclays’* adoption of DevOps
The bank has adopted a requirements, and since January has led it to develop small
DevOps agenda and is going up 2018, the Payment Services Directive interconnected teams to tackle
the maturity curve – when failing, II (PSD2), aiming to give customers incremental tasks, or ’going big
they are failing faster. However, access to more innovative and flexible through small’. Having channelled
progress is slower than others in financial services through third-party this agility and found the optimal
non-banking sectors owing to a internet and mobile solutions. These balance between speed and
number of factors outlined in this providers can now access their banking control, the company has vastly
white paper. information down to transaction level improved its implementation
thanks to Open Banking services. efficiency, and halved time to
Complying with these new regulations market. As a result, throughout,
while keeping customer data secure is a doubled in just two years.
tightrope act.
As this shows, adoption of true
Risk reduction DevOps and the introduction of
While banks are keen to innovate automation can actually reduce
and compete, they understand that the risk of change by removing the
every regulatory change must be opportunity for human error.
tackled as an absolute priority. The
teams creating, testing, running
and deploying affected services
are in no doubt as to where their
priorities lie, leading to risk aversion
to change. A single mistake in
implementing alterations to any core
systems, regulated or not, could have
extremely serious repercussions.
* Jonathan Smart, Head of Development Services and Agility Lead, Barclays – TechBeacon, Jun
2017 https://techbeacon.com/how-barclays-balances-speed-vs-control-devops
4 Why Bank on DevOps?Broader responsibility activities provides the auditability
Regulatory compliance should not and visibility required to demonstrate Did you know?
be the end goal of a single team compliance. In 2016**, the cost of regulatory
locked away from decision makers. compliance in the US was $1.9
DevOps can broaden the burden of The power of DevOps trillion – 10% of the country’s
responsibility so that, with a culture The application of automation to GDP.
of collaboration between business analyse data at each small iteration
and IT teams, and accountability can vastly reduce workforce cost.
and alignment passed up and down And, with a solid testing model Industry voices:
the chain, compliance moves to the in place, adding rules for future
forefront. regulations (and subsequently “Regulators are always going
ensuring compliance) is a swift, to be rightly interested in
Under DevOps methodology, straightforward process that doesn’t what you do and how you do
business proposals and end goals require entirely new methodologies. it. Banks shouldn’t view this
are designed to reflect regulatory as an impediment – but as a
changes from the beginning,and In summary, while banks are good opportunity to help make
if the regulatory landscape alters understandably risk averse to the case for why they need to
midway through development, then change, owing to the compliance transform.”
Jonathan Webster
iterative trials, testing and feedback and regulatory landscape they Former CIO, Lloyds Banking Group Digital
means improvements can be swiftly find themselves in, it is a mistake
implemented. to consider it a hindrance to “RBS has strong engagement
DevOps adoption. On the contrary, with the banking regulatory
Compliance is a huge drain on adopting DevOps methodologies community. As a bank, we
resources for big banks. For instance, can help to ensure compliance put the customer at the heart
Thompson Reuters* suggests that is achieved across the company, of everything we do - it’s our
the top 15 US banks employ a total while increasing productivity and primary objective. We recognise
of 95,000 staff on compliance efficiency allows innovation in the need to do this all through
alone. Cutting down on the manual parallel. the regulator environment and
overhead of compliance is an leveraging DevOps practices
attractive proposition and offered allows us to ensure best practice
DevOps practices. Automation is bedded in from the start.”
across development and operational Gary Peterson
Programme Lead, Royal Bank of Scotland
* Marion Leslie, Managing Director, Thomson Reuters Enterprise proposition –
https://blogs.thomsonreuters.com/answerson/automation-regulation-compliance/
** Competitive Enterprise Institute ‘Ten Thousand Commandments’ report 2017 –
https://cei.org/10kc2017
ecs-digital.co.uk
ecs.co.uk 5Automate testing to save
time and money
Digital transformation in the financial sector is not as
Behaviour Driven Development:
it’s more than just testing
straightforward as in others, due to a unique set of
Behaviour Driven Development tough challenges.
(BDD) is a business-first
approach that puts an agreed
Banks must deal with the need but it needs to happen earlier in the
definition of ‘success’ at the
for absolute data security, the Software Development Life Cycle, a
heart of development and
demands of a strict and ever- concept known as “shifting left”.
testing. It’s about proper
changing regulatory environment, as
communication from the outset,
well as competition from FinTechs, There is an appetite for it, but issues
getting all stakeholders in
Challenger Banks and, in particular, such as provisioning reliable and
the business to set out what
GAFA, who are DevOps natives repeatable environments are proving
‘done’ really means. This then
operating at incredible scale across to be stumbling blocks.
becomes the cornerstone of
multiple sectors worldwide.
agile development, a vision of
Mainframe systems are expensive to
‘success’ that all departments
Getting testing practices right run and maintain - and are embedded
can work towards and test
can help make the transformation within organisations. This means
against continuously.
journey more achievable through businesses need to leverage shared
reducing both costs and the time environments, which slows down
When properly implemented,
taken to deliver quality software. the process as the number of test
BDD should lead to better
environments will be limited based on
productivity, quality, time
Testing is typically manual, time- available infrastructure and resources
to value, and ensure that
consuming and error-prone. This available.
accurately developed products
creates bottlenecks and slows down
reach the market fast.
the workflow across the rest of the Time struggles
business, depleting the resources A number of internal barriers exist within
available for innovation. Enterprises organisations for something
are looking to solutions that enable like requesting infrastructure. It is
them to run multiple tests, over a seemingly simple request, but a
multiple environments in a consistent traditional siloed organisation structure
manner. and a hyper risk-averse culture owing
to regulation means this can be a real
Key challenges challenge. On average, requesting
All this is set against the background infrastructure takes between 3 to 6
of acquisitions, meaning there are months, depending on the environment.
now, in effect, four big banks in the UK.
Customers may think they are banking Even with the available infrastructure,
with one bank but are in fact sitting on the environment must be correctly
the systems of another; as yet, no bank configured; this is also a typically
has done a full simplification of their manual and laborious process, leading
systems in the back end. Add to this to inconsistencies. When environments
issues of dealing with both structured are set up differently each time, it can
and unstructured data, and it is no lead to false defects, bugs and errors.
wonder testing has become such a This makes tests unrepeatable and
complicated problem to solve. increases time to market. Typically,
provisioning environments take between
1 and 5 weeks to complete.
Testing in banks is done thoroughly,
6 Why Bank on DevOps?To speed up the pipeline through of data and data-masking while
improved environment agility and ensuring that the same set of data The case for automation:
reliability, we can use container is being run for each set of tests. We worked with a leading
technologies, such as Docker, to run Its ability to bookmark data points Finance company to help them
co-existent applications on the same means that tests can be run with embrace automation, starting
infrastructure. By using containers, it is consistency from an application and with back-end applications. We
possible to create easily provisioned, on data perspective, ensuring that the reduced their time to deployment
demand, reliable, and self-contained same real-world datasets are being by up to 60x and dramatically
environments in a fraction of the time. used throughout. decreased their change failure
rate to less than once a year.
The need for real data Automation has another benefit in
addition to speeding up provisioning
To test effectively, production-
of environments and data, that of
like data is required. Regulatory Industry voices:
cost savings. Inconsistent and over-
concerns, in particular GDPR*, mean “Banks are good at testing –
provisioned environments can result
that banks instinctively shy away from but they’re challenged with
in unpredictable outages. The cost in
this, but it can be done if the data is large, complex systems with low
downtime and testers’ time to fix the
properly anonymised. Quite simply, levels of automation. They need
environment is considerable when
testing modernisation requires access to quickly adopt automation
calculated over the course of a year
to consistent and quality data to be practices, engage the right
with multiple instances, each taking
able to replicate real production-like partners who can help, and give
two to three days to fix. Configuration
scenarios. Yet in many organisations, their teams the permission and
management tools such as Ansible
data provisioning remains a very support to get on and do it.”
and Puppet give businesses
manual process, which is both slow Jonathan Webster
increased control over downtime Former CIO, Lloyds Banking Group Digital
and unreliable, and results in out-of-
costs by using automation to
date data.
minimise human error and maximise “RBS is looking to create an
deployment speed. environment where all processes
Data virtualisation platforms such as
. are automated or orchestrated,
Delphix can be used to automate
including automated testing
data provision, given consistency
and regression testing. From
what we’ve seen so far, this
Traditional Environments
would dramatically reduce lead
App 1
App 2
times and delays in projects
Test Environment Build Test Environment Reset Test Environment Reset
and provides the potential for
considerable efficiencies in our
Test Environment Build Test Environment Reset Test
end-to-end delivery model.”
Unproductive wait-time Gary Peterson
Compromised shared components Programme Lead, Royal Bank of Scotland
Poor quality data
Conflicting build times / test cycles
Inconsistent versions
Agile Environments
App 1
App 2
Test Test Test Test
V Reset Reset Reset Reset
0 2 4 6
Weeks
* https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/data-protection-reform/overview-of-the-gdpr/
ecs-digital.co.uk
ecs.co.uk 7Unlocking the value of
legacy systems
Legacy systems cast a long shadow over the financial
Industry voices:
sector. Essential systems running on old Mainframes are
“Banks have some great
engineering talent in their teams a fact of life.
that support their mainframe
banking systems and legacy
The fact is that systems using ancient
estates. These teams could add
programming languages (Cobol is Change is essential
huge value to legacy platforms but
now 58 years old) present a challenge You are only as fast as your slowest
are generally being underutilised
for companies trying to remain link. Any system that’s slow and
– mostly due to the misconception
relevant against younger, more nimble process-heavy will hold back an
that you can’t apply DevOps
competitors. Sometimes the reason organisation from moving at the pace
tooling and practices on the
for not migrating these systems to their customers expect and demand
mainframe. You can, and you
newer platforms is the avoidance of in today’s 24/7 world. Such systems,
should.”
Jonathan Webster risk, sometimes it is because there are left untouched, limit innovation and
Former CIO, Lloyds Banking Group Digital functions that sit as a closed book are a risk in themselves, as faster, more
(for example, pensions) where there is agile competitors spring up across the
“RBS has of course faced legacy simply no value in migrating them. financial sector.
issues in the past. We’ve put a
lot of effort into addressing this DevOps is often associated with new, Businesses have two options for their
and are now coming out the startup or unicorn companies like Netflix legacy applications:
other side. We’ve invested heavily and Spotify who were in a position to
in building resilient IT systems, grow from a greenfield project with 1. Re-engineer the application and
enabling us to respond to a DevOps at their core. Perhaps because replace it with something modern
changing banking industry and of this association, some people 2. Work with what they’ve got to bring it
forward-facing challenges such wrongly assume that DevOps is not up to speed
as FinTech disruption, market appropriate for traditional enterprises
forces and the digitisation of with legacy technologies already in When it comes to critical applications in
banking platforms.” place. However, DevOps is not about the financial world, the former is rarely a
Gary Peterson realistic or economically viable option.
technologies, it is about behaviour and
practices. Chances are that those legacy systems
Microservices and Containers are there because their replacement is
In fact, at ECS Digital we are seeing an simply too risky, both from business and
Mainframe Technology increasing trend, within enterprises, of regulatory perspectives.
applying DevOps practices to legacy
systems. In many cases, decision- This leaves option 2 as the only possible
makers are aware of the benefits of course of action. On the face of it, this
DevOps but need help to understand may appear to offer limited scope to
how to leverage it in the oldest and improve business agility, productivity
often most critical and complex areas and quality - but this is not the case.
of their own organisations. Adoption of DevOps principles and
practices enables companies to unlock
value in the systems they already have.
Devops
8 Why Bank on DevOps?Changing the legacy mind-set
In traditional enterprises, people Continuous Delivery on a Mainframe Industry voices:
are often used to working the way for example is 100% achievable and “Banks need to find ways to
they have or their team has for a there are many tools from leading improve their old and complex
significant period of time. In order to vendors such as Automic that provide ecosystems. Some of that will be
ease cultural challenges associated the same capability for mainframes as architectural, but they also need
with the adoption of new ways of they do for Wintel and Linux platforms. to automate and push towards
working, it’s important to work with the Applying DevOps principles to legacy DevOps tooling and practices
teams that will be impacted, and help applications enables organisations to everywhere, old and new.”
them to fully understand the benefits accelerate the delivery of change to Jonathan Webster
both to the business and themselves. existing systems up to the same speed Former CIO, Lloyds Banking Group Digital
Individual benefits include exposure to as the rest of the company or, at least,
desirable new technologies and working fast enough to remain competitive. “Moving to a DevOps model
practices, enhancing their future job has allowed RBS to tackle
prospects. Lastly, process change can be a technical debt systematically.
particularly tricky hurdle to overcome. We have a very well-established
In addition, legacy systems face another Small changes can have a big simplification agenda and are
issue, that of skills shortages. As the impact on end goals and can be currently looking to further
years go by, legacy skills are becoming implemented to support even siloed rationalise and upgrade the IT
less widespread and consequently organisational structures with little if estate. We are determined to put
people with those skills are demanding any collaboration or trust. We take a customer service at the heart of
an ever-increasing premium. Leveraging detailed look at the ideal culture for what we do in Technology.”
automation to embed this rare SME DevOps in the next section. Gary Peterson
Programme Lead, Royal Bank of Scotland
knowledge into workflows and pipelines
reduces reliance on these niche skills All this goes to demonstrate that
and realigns the balance of power DevOps isn’t just for the new
between organisation and expert. world. Its adoption can bring huge
A spotlight on Scandinavian
benefits to any business. The key is in
bank, Nordic Nous:
The right tools for the job understanding what they are trying
to achieve, which elements are best Big UK retail banks are still
Tooling is sometimes raised as a massively reliant on legacy
placed to help achieve those goals,
concern but while there are a number systems that they cannot risk
the associated benefits, and the
of differ,ent options, adopting DevOps changing. How can this be
effort required to realise them.
practices doesn’t necessarily mean overcome?
bringing in new tools to an organisation.
Well-engineered processes supporting One way, pioneered by
DevOps practices are critical. Scandinavian banks, is to use
Supporting poor processes with the new technologies to build a
best tools will have limited benefits – new customer bank alongside
whilst good processes supported by the existing bank. Over the
average tools will deliver better benefit. past decade, they have thrown
away their legacy technologies
and invested heavily in the right
frameworks to go down the agile
route.
ecs-digital.co.uk
ecs.co.uk 9Why banks need to
change their culture
Traditional banks have never faced a greater threat,
Industry voices:
with Challenger banks like Atom and Monzo on the rise
“RBS has invested heavily in a top
down and bottom up approach - and the looming threat of GAFA...
to cultural transformation. We’re
encouraging simulation training,
Unencumbered by legacy technology change in a blame-free environment.
visualisation and upskilling to
and practices, and underpinned by Failure demonstrates that boundaries
develop an internal learning culture
methodologies such as DevOps, are being tested and are an
and get the most out of our people.
Challenger banks are eschewing old- opportunity to learn.
We’ve also put a lot of ground work
fashioned ways of working in favour
in to ensure that we’ve selected
of an agile culture that promotes Accepting change
and empowered the right leaders
innovation. And just around the This is one of the first challenges
to move this learning community
corner lies the threat of GAFA, high- of moving to a DevOps culture -
forward.”
Gary Peterson performing Digital/DevOps native accepting that there may be better
Programme Lead, Royal Bank of Scotland unicorns with levels of innovation, way of doing things. Changing mind-
efficiency and customer centricity that sets and building confidence in new
most organisations can only dream of. ways of working is essential to get the
“You can go into any bank today Traditional banks need to change their most value from DevOps adoption.
and find pockets of brilliant culture to meet these challenges – or
engineering. But engineering suffer the consequences. Traditional banks also face
transformation is a cultural geographical challenges: it is more
shift that needs to be driven The culture DevOps engenders within difficult to introduce new methodologies
and lead from the top-down organisations brings with it a licence across multiple disparate locations, but
as well as bottom-up. The key to fail sometimes – something which it does
challenge is Leadership having is essential for any real innovation to not prevent the adoption of DevOps.
the confidence and belief to drive exist - with processes in place to spot For example, the communication
IT transformation by unlocking the and remedy failures quickly and early, issue can be solved by focusing on
potential of existing engineering enabling them to grow faster. In this knowledge sharing and collaboration
talent, bringing new talent in way, teams are encouraged to be across teams and locations, and
and supporting with a new and proactive, accepting and ensuring technology is in place to
relevant set of partners. And, of understanding of their impact on each support this.
course, as this transformation is decision or
still in its early stages for many
large organisations, there isn’t
much priority and that can seem
both lonely and risky. But it needs
to be done. ”
Jonathan Webster
Former CIO, Lloyds Banking Group Digital
“Failure is an option here.
If things are not failing, you
10 Why Bank on DevOps?The importance of people
Many of the challenges in traditional Big banks, if they are to remain The best DevOps team
banks involve or are related to people. relevant in the future, need to change structures:
These include dealing with different their culture piece by piece. By Getting the formation of teams
generations of employees: for instance, embracing agile methodologies and structures right in order to
millennials tend not to be loyal to and concepts (for example, Kanban implement DevOps efficiently
a company, whereas loyal, rooted boards for managing and improving isn’t easy but it’s absolutely key to
employees may be stuck in waterfall workflows) banks can quickly improve a successful DevOps adoption.
ways of doing things. There is also management frameworks so that We typically see three successful
heavy reliance on contractors, often in they have a structured system team structures within our clients:
place for the short term, who offer little enabling them to reduce their time to
or no long-term cultural benefit to the market, going from several months to
Platform Engineering Teams
company. significantly shorter timelines.
Banks also tend to be very hierarchical Every business needs to adopt the
in their management structures, strategy that works best for it. ECS Platform Availability & Upgrades
resulting in disconnects between Digital, from years of experience Define New Practices
levels and teams, and leading to helping organisations improve
High Level Strategic and
unrecognised gaps in knowledge that their ways of working through the Tactical Decision Making
are not spotted until after the fact. The adoption of DevOps, believe the
combination of hierarchical structures, best approach in most enterprises
traditional ways of working and long- is Platform Engineering (right). The Mortgages Payments Loans
service employees has a tendency to Platform Engineering Team sits across
create gatekeeping behaviour, where the different business units (e.g.
mortgages or payments) but then Virtual Teams
people in fear of change refuse to
share in order to boost their individual splits and works within each, helping Builds Practices
importance to the company. the people in those units adopt
different working practices.
Mortgages Payments Loans
It’s a team game
Added benefits
Above all, DevOps adoption is about
This structure not only provides a
achieving organisational objectives Teams based on Functions
unified and consistent approach
– such as improving time to market.
across the business units, but also
Getting the formation of teams and
allows for flexibility within individual
structures right is key to promoting trust Developers QA
Systems
teams who may have different ways Admin
and transparency and a shared pursuit
of working. The consistent presence
of delivering those goals. Support and
across business units ensures a joined Develop Software Test Software Maintain Systems
up approach to organisation-wide Build Practices
requirements such as regulation,
minimising the burden of compliance. For more insight into these team
structures, read our blog: “The
best team structures for DevOps
success”
ecs.co.uk/resources/best-team-structures-
for-devops-success/
ecs-digital.co.uk
ecs.co.uk 11Reaping the rewards of
outsourced functions
Outsourcing is a solution that comes with its own set of
Industry voices:
problems - a set of problems that DevOps can help solve.
“To date, many IT partners of
banks haven’t followed a business
or operating model that pushes Outsourced functions can be difficult
them in a DevOps direction. The to manage directly. The technical
shift to small teams, consistent debt hidden in code created fast- Shared responsibility
toolchains and relentless and-cheap by an external source The ideal is to shift testing to the left
automation is a fundamental may only become apparent after the and trial new ways of interacting,
change for them. Unsurprisingly, contract with its creator has ended. applying them incrementally to
they are having to respond and Whilst outsourcing may sometimes the teams working with partners,
the quality of the response will be financially beneficial, and taking and analysing the results as they
be key. Not all will be able to tasks like cryptography out-of-house happen. Then, as a clear path
change fast enough – or with the can lead to greater security, proper emerges, introduce the appropriate
right quality - to keep up with the governance is crucial - measuring processes and tooling in other relevant
banks’ needs.” code quality should always be an areas. Maintain control of testing
Jonathan Webster
internal responsibility. environments in-house, consider
Former CIO, Lloyds Banking Group Digital
creative ways to reduce provisioning
“RBS has engaged with our Time for DevOps and deployment complexity, and
strategic partners, to share With entire critical business functions avoid scheduling conflicts in order to
learnings and improve two-way now commonly outsourced, DevOps maximise throughput.
collaboration. This is helping us to comes into its own. The DevOps
evolve our relationships with our focuses on collaboration, quality and DevOps’ principles of shared
suppliers to become increasingly measurable outcomes helps create responsibility also flow down to client
interactive and add more a unified framework with which to accountability, although this comes
depth and value to our supplier interact with multiple services and with its own set of pitfalls. Suppliers
engagements.” suppliers, from staffing solutions to the who do not live up to expectations
Gary Peterson SIAM team and IT backend suppliers pass failures down the line; the FCA
Programme Lead, Royal Bank of Scotland that run functions that may once have sees banks as accountable, no matter
been in-house. where the fault may stem from. The
cost of a major outage or regulatory
It may be tempting to encourage error puts fast-and-cheap into
outsourcers to adopt DevOps perspective – but with appropriate
practices, but it is often unrealistic controls and safeguards, executed
to expect to influence the business consistently and automatically,
practices of a separate company. outsourcing is something that can be
The key is to ensure that the entire managed safely.
lifecycle of a system from development
to operation is supported by DevOps Shared benefit
practices and tooling. Regardless of A fundamental pillar of DevOps is the
the activity that has been outsourced concept of continuous improvement.
it must be delivered as if it was As contracts with outsourced suppliers
performed internally. It will therefore complete, consider contract that
automatically be picked up and provide incentives for improvements
subjected to the same automated in key KPIs, thus sharing some of the
processes and controls. benefit with outsourced partners.
* http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/pra/Documents/supervision/enforcementnotices/
en271115.pdf
12 Why Bank on DevOps?Aligning operations and
development functions
Many established banks, for all their skill in
Digital leadership:
development, are on the back foot. Keeping pace with
Gartner* predicts that, by 2020,
new technology is never a simple matter.
The challenge from GAFA, who already
operate in a DevOps manner, means
change versus stability and reliability.
Properly adopted, DevOps can
50%
of CIOs will have been displaced
that embracing new ways of working break this barrier of distrust between from digital leadership if they
is already an absolute priority for Development and Operations by have not transformed their teams’
traditional banks. Operations don’t using well-established and defined capabilities.
have it easy - how many teams processes to give each side visibility
support 30-year-old Cobol systems and accountability. A streamlined Industry voices:
at the back end and millions of app- workflow, backed by making
“Dev and Ops need to come
based mobile users on the front end? communication a priority, offers
together to drive wider business
reassurance to operations whilst
and IT teams to follow suit. This
DevOps is typically prevalent at making Development aware of past,
will indirectly align accountability
the more digital front-end but it’s current and future challenges.
and ownership within businesses,
less common at the back-end,
improving the delivery of complex
in part due to perception around Underpinning the workflow with
projects - but it does require
legacy and traditional systems. In automation provides Development
investment in time and money to
the risk-averse world of banking, the with increased velocity, while
change the operating structure of
reticence of operations towards any embedding controls and the
a major bank. So it won’t happen
kind of change is understandable. inherent consistency of automation
without conscious investment..”
provides Operations with comfort.
Jonathan Webster
The blame game In an ideal sructure, Development Former CIO, Lloyds Banking Group Digital
A cursory glance at the customer- and Operations resources work in
facing outages of the past few years the same physical or virtual team “Being such a large organisation,
confirms that customers are not supporting a platform or customer RBS has been focusing for some
supporting a blameless culture. The journey. time on the best ways to bring
idea of altering or replacing an ageing all teams focused on customer
but functional system does not sit well - Strategic improvements journeys and outcomes together.
operations know full well that negative No methodology can change the This is helping our people get
headlines, fines or even jail time loom if development lifecycle of legacy closer to customer outcomes
services are impacted or regulations not systems overnight. Automation and ways that technology can
met. provides control, visibility, insight and support the Banks 2020 strategic
much more. This helps operations goals.”
However, banks cannot afford to maintain and even improve service Gary Peterson
stand still if they wish to exist in 10 levels through increased bandwidth Programme Lead, Royal Bank of Scotland
years’ time. As a result, the business for high value tasks. Enhanced
sides are pushing for change, for communication between operations
new features and an increase and other stakeholders in the
in overall agility. In a traditional development lifecycle ultimately
structure, development – who deliver improves collaboration and efficiency,
the change and new features – are which are vital to meet the challenge
often effectively working in opposition of GAFA where all this is native.
to KPIs. For example, innovation and
* https://www.gartner.com/binaries/content/assets/events/keywords/infrastructure-
operations-management/iome5/gartner-predicts-for-it-infrastructure-and-operations.pdf
ecs-digital.co.uk
ecs.co.uk 13Conclusion
Industry voices: Banks are aware of the need to adopt DevOps to gain
Businesses should have a plan to competitive advantages but are struggling to replace
tackle all of the areas [mentioned ageing waterfall methodologies with agile techniques.
in this whitepaper] to be successful
with their DevOps initiatives.
At RBS, we’re confronting them As we have seen, big banks are It’s a myth that legacy issues mean
with one of the largest agile and struggling to keep up with the pace DevOps practices can’t be applied.
DevOps transformations in the set by Challenger banks and FinTechs Technologies such as containerisation
banking industry to date. This vision who have smaller product sets and and data virtualisation, coupled with
is being supported across the entire don’t have to deal with updating automation, can improve the speed
business, enabling us to deliver legacy technologies. They also have and quality of change in existing
more value for our customers.” the problem of preparing for the systems, whilst reducing reliance on
Gary Peterson GAFA threat, which is potentially far increasingly scarce and expensive
Programme Lead, Royal Bank of Scotland greater than that posed by current specialists.
challengers, given GAFA’s volume of
How ECS Digital can help: customer data and scale. All that, and The heritage advantage
Every organisation is unique. then add a host of regulatory issues Ultimately, DevOps adoption is a
There is no“one size fits all” like GDPR and Open Banking. journey. Big banks don’t have a
solution for the adoption of blank sheet of paper to start from
DevOps, which means that Learning to overcome DevOps fears like Challenger banks, FinTechs
the barriers to DevOps are and misconceptions and GAFA. So unless they build
different and specific to each Banks are slowly changing their separately on the side (an extremely
organisation. Successful adoption organisational structures and costly venture) they’ll always have
of DevOps requires both top- operating models to bring business the heritage challenge. That
down money and bottom-up change and IT closer together. Such is challenge does, however, come
buy in, which is why most of our the risk-averse nature of the industry, with tried and tested operational
customers begin their interaction that an aversion to quick change is processes - which typically
with us through a DevOps almost built in. demonstrate greater resilience and
Maturity Assessment. availability than their more nimble
But it doesn’t have to be this way competition. Combining this with
The ECS Digital DevOps – DevOps is not risky in any way the agility, quality and compliance
Maturity Assessment: when properly implemented. In fact, benefits of DevOps gives big banks
We review your organisational getting the culture and working formidable capability with which to
culture, structure, processes methodologies right can help compete in the digital era.
and tools, and recommend how to strengthen governance and
DevOps methodologies could be regulatory compliance across the
adopted to deliver more value business whilst increasing innovation BDD
to your company. The output is and agility.
OUS TESTI
a roadmap for the adoption of NU
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DevOps
14 2017 CIO Guide to DevOpsAbout ECS
ECS is a leader in automation and digital
Customer successes:
transformation. We help enterprises deliver software,
and software-related services, faster and at lower
cost through the adoption of DevOps and Continuous
Delivery practices. We’ve been delivering successful
36x
Enabled a leading Telco to deliver 36
projects since 2003, with hundreds of happy customers. times faster than competitors
We work closely as consulting
partners with key vendors including:
Automic, AWS, CloudBees, Docker,
GitHub and Puppet, as well as
Our core services include:
DevOps and Continuous Delivery
• DevOps Maturity and Readiness
30%
Aided 30% year on year growth for
an online Gambling business using
directly with customers. We have Assessments* Automation
helped over 100 customers, including • DevOps Strategy
a global top three retailer, a top • DevOps Consulting
five UK retail bank, and a large
European telco – realise the benefits
of DevOps and Continuous Delivery
practices.
• DevOps Training
• Tool Specific Health Checks,
Recommendations and
Implementation.
60x
Reduced deployment time by up
to 60 times for a leading Finance
Many of our customers begin Agile Testing company
their interaction with us through • Continuous Testing and Test
a Review or Assessment*, from
which we provide instant tailored
recommendations specific to
their business, challenge and IT
Automation
• BDD/ATDD Solutions
• Information Visualisation 75%
Reduced deployment times by 75%
environment. for one of the world’s leading Retailers
92%
More information can be found at
www.ecs.co.uk
Reduced in time to market through
the introduction of BDD and
Continuous Delivery, supported by a
revised test strategy
99%
Reduced time to market (3 days
to 22 minutes) by re-engineering a
customer’s ‘proprietary’ automated
test pack using open source tooling
ecs-digital.co.uk
ecs.co.uk 15ECS Singapore
120 Robinson Road, #08-01,
Singapore 068913
enquiries@ecs.co.uk
ECS Pune
Office 203, 2nd Floor Building 2,
Commerzone, Survey,
144/145 Yerwada
Samrat Ashok Path
Pune 411006
+91 (0)206 726 0700
enquiries@ecs.co.uk
Want to work with a trusted digital
transformation consultancy?
hello@ecs.co.uk
ecs.co.uk
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