Millennium bcp has a bold vision, innovative practices, and a relentless focus on delivering customer value. Millennium bcp is Portugal’s largest private-sector bank, with 1,334 branches serving more than 6 million customers around the world. The key to its vision and success has been continued investment in the latest technologies. The bank was among the first in its market to introduce ATMs and alternative payment methods, and one of the first to deploy early online services like transactional websites and an online financial marketplace.
Using Azure Arc helps us spin the wheels faster across our hybrid, multi-cloud environment and make a lot more changes far more easily so that we can better deliver value. – Nuno Guedes: Cloud Compute Lead
Using its technological advantage to create value for customers has become a market differentiator for the bank. So, Millennium bcp set out to further expand its offerings and boost agility through more rapid deployment capabilities with container and multicloud technology. It found the architecture and the oversight it needed in Microsoft Azure Arc.
Building agility in a hybrid and multicloud environment
Millennium bcp, as a financial institution, aimed to deliver innovative banking solutions more rapidly without compromising security and compliance. Although the bank had invested in Azure DevOps to enhance agile development processes, its initial virtual machine cloud deployment was proving to be a bottleneck. Recognizing container technology as a more efficient way to accelerate development while adhering to data localization, data residency, and security requirements, Millennium bcp sought a new approach. Nuno Guedes, Cloud Compute Lead at Millennium bcp, noted, "We wanted to speed up our development process to the point where a new feature could move from concept to production within a week."
The bank needed a solution that could handle both cloud-native implementations and existing on-premises workloads, aiming to develop a standardized method for deploying containers in its hybrid environment. Compliance considerations also required maintaining a multicloud approach to ensure disaster recovery and proper exit strategies. Guedes stated, "We needed contingency plans for workloads, such as the ability to move a workload running in an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster to a Google Cloud Platform or Amazon Web Services cluster, or vice versa, in case of emergency."
To meet the requirements for both on-premises and multicloud-based Kubernetes deployments, Millennium bcp chose GitOps for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Azure Arc–managed Flux as its foundational deployment framework. However, the bank sought a centralized way to manage its hybrid and multicloud container environment. Guedes explained, "We had these deployment frameworks in place, but we needed a solution to elevate them to an enterprise-level service. That’s where Azure Arc came in."
Advancing with GitOps
Millennium bcp developed a comprehensive model to manage its entire container landscape using GitOps and Flux. This model integrates the management of application life cycles and infrastructure components, such as data residency, into GitOps, automating the process seamlessly. Nuno Guedes, Cloud Compute Lead at Millennium bcp, explains, "With GitOps, we can swiftly and easily move workloads between on-premises and cloud environments." Flux aids the bank in managing cluster multitenancy, allowing for heavy multitenancy on 90 percent of its clusters. This setup provides teams with the autonomy they need while maintaining centralized control. Flux ensures teams have the necessary resources and permissions, enabling them to focus solely on delivery and accelerate the transition from development to production.
Guedes adds, "Using GitOps for AKS gives our developers an end-to-end experience, granting them autonomy to spin up infrastructure and access resources with sophistication, without needing to know the underlying details of where it’s running."
A Versatile Architecture
Azure Arc provides Millennium bcp with a unified management interface for its hybrid multicloud environment. It facilitates comprehensive cluster management and oversight, offering visibility across all Kubernetes clusters in Europe, whether running on Azure, Google Cloud, or on-premises. This visibility enhances infrastructure management, resource delegation, and development processes. Additionally, Azure Arc assists in meeting compliance requirements by maintaining designated exit strategies for financial workloads in the cloud.
Nelson Boavida, IT Unit Manager at Millennium bcp, emphasizes, "Azure Arc offers the enterprise-level reliability we need, being a tested solution that ensures the utmost reliability." The bank uses Azure Monitor to pull logs, events, and metrics, ensuring proper cluster operation, and Azure Policy to enhance security protocols. This setup allows security teams to focus on defining requirements rather than implementation, trusting Azure Policy to handle deployment.
Guedes highlights, "With Azure Arc, security alerts are straightforward to act on, regardless of where the workload is running."
Enhanced Agility Through Visibility
With improved visibility into its infrastructure through Azure Arc, Millennium bcp has implemented process improvements that enhance team agility. Azure Arc enables the right teams to tackle the right tasks efficiently. Infrastructure issues are managed by infrastructure teams, while application cycle management is streamlined across on-premises, Azure, and other cloud platforms. This clarity improves efficiency and consistency. Boavida states, "The enhanced control from Azure Arc allows us to work more efficiently and deliver results more quickly."
This increased visibility and control enable Millennium bcp to move faster, innovate better, and create greater value for its customers. The bank can quickly move workloads across vast distances and make infrastructure decisions to meet changing compliance, proximity, cost, or reliability needs. This agility saves time and reduces costs, allowing the bank to adapt to customer requirements and consistently deliver valuable solutions. Guedes concludes, "Azure Arc enables us to make rapid changes across our hybrid, multicloud environment, enhancing our ability to deliver value."
Ultimately, Azure Arc empowers Millennium bcp to operationalize and architect agility in a dynamic world. The bank can remain flexible, whether multicloud or hybrid, to address business and customer challenges effectively. Boavida concludes, "Azure Arc lets us control our destiny."
With Azure Arc, people aren’t spending time trying to assess if something is correct or not when they see a security alert. They can just act on it. – Nuno Guedes: Cloud Compute Lead