The teams don’t have to look across systems — there is one screen on the wall, being refreshed automatically and the latest information is there. Everything is immediate and transparent.
ABN AMRO Banks on Quality Software Development With Splunk
Key Challenges
While undergoing its digital transformation, ABN AMRO needed a holistic solution to manage its software development life cycle and deliver tailored analytics to multiple teams.
Key Results
With Splunk, ABN AMRO has expanded access to data, equipping everyone from developers to executives with actionable insights that improve security, reduce downtime and accelerate application delivery.
Digital transformations present a host of challenges — and opportunities.
Amsterdam-based bank ABN AMRO serves clients in the retail, private banking and corporate banking sectors. While undergoing a digital transformation, the bank needed a holistic solution to manage its software development life cycle.
Turning Data Into Outcomes
- Provides C-level executives with actionable machine data for strategic decision-making
- Improved quality of software development and delivery for faster time to market
- Accelerated detection and recovery times while reducing security incidents
Hitting KPIs During Every Step of Application Development
ABN AMRO has historically used Splunk® Enterprise to proactively monitor and prevent security breaches. Ingmar Vis, product owner at ABN AMRO, says it was a natural extension to use the Splunk platform to generate tailored insights into the quality of its prolific software development. To date, Vis has onboarded more than 1,000 applications across 100 teams. Prior to using Splunk software, IT & CI/CD performance data was generic and manually generated. Vis says, “We wanted to move away from different types of reports that were being created. You would get different versions of software development metrics and these would be created manually.”
With Splunk Enterprise, ABN AMRO can correlate and aggregate data to provide comprehensive visibility at software, team and organizational levels. The teams are now able to build dashboards to monitor every step of application development from inception to success, ensuring KPIs are hit.
Greater Transparency for All
Splunk Enterprise is now central to managing the bank’s software development, providing a holistic overview to developers and management alike.
Real-time metrics provide in-depth insight into frequency of application build, quality and security of the code as well as success and failures of releases. Vis says, “The teams don’t have to look across systems — there is one screen on the wall, being refreshed automatically and the latest information is there. Everything is immediate and transparent.”
An added bonus, according to Vis, has been the full operational visibility afforded to C-level executives offering actionable strategic data. “This is a huge gain because in the past, the data was hidden in sales sheets, in PowerPoint presentations. Now we’re talking about machine data, which is as objective as it gets.”
Faster Time to Market
According to Vis, Splunk software has helped the bank reduce security violations and improve the quality of application development, improving time to market. By tracking the build journey of each application and the time between failure and success, the software teams are able to measure and create projections on recovery times.
The bank also uses the data to incentivize teams with awards given to most improved applications. Vis says, “The data is now being gamified in nice dashboards with Splunk and looks really good. Splunk is now something that teams really want to use to get to the top of the ladder.”
Financial Services & Insurance
Invest in data-driven action
Deeper Analytical Insights Across Whole IT Estate
ABN AMRO is currently implementing Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI) as part of a project to reduce application downtime during the build process. Using the visualization tools within the Glass Table feature, teams will be able to quickly and easily identify and fix the root cause of problems, whether it’s at the application or infrastructure level.
Related Content
E-BOOK
The Data Age Is Here. Are You Ready?
In an era of accelerated digital transformation, give yourself a competitive advantage.
E-BOOK
Banking on Resilience
How leading financial services institutions build secure systems, reliable payment platforms and consumer trust
