Atruvia AG transforms banking

Atruvia AG, a key player in the banking sector, has a longstanding reputation for digitizing banking processes and providing services to major financial institutions. Supporting 950 banks in Germany, Atruvia manages 89 million bank accounts, processes 87 billion transactions annually, and operates across six data centers. With its extensive operations, the IT provider has been at the forefront of innovating and streamlining banking processes for decades.

Leveraging NetApp solutions, the company focused on key goals, including automating processes, enhancing customer satisfaction, and finding significant cost efficiencies. By expanding its intelligent data infrastructure, Atruvia reinforced its commitment to innovation, paving the way for a more efficient and seamless banking experience.

In a rapidly evolving banking landscape, Atruvia continually strives to deliver comprehensive offerings to its banking customers. It faced increasing competition from FinTech startups disrupting the traditional banking industry. These challengers offered innovative solutions, user-friendly interfaces, and seamless customer experiences that drove Atruvia’s determination to stay competitive.

Atruvia focuses on providing secure and tailored IT solutions for financial institutions, helping them navigate digital transformation. Its expertise spans from developing efficient banking platforms to offering advanced technologies designed to streamline operations, enhance customer experiences, and maintain compliance with intricate EU regulations, such as the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA). With a commitment to partnership and reliability, Atruvia is a trusted enabler for modernizing financial services.

Atruvia faced a range of challenges, from improving stability in its NetApp^® ONTAP^® and MetroCluster^® systems to effectively operating NFS and CIFS protocols and managing the exponential growth of its StorageGRID^® object storage systems. Further complicating matters was the need to enhance automation for compliance purposes.

Operational bottlenecks hindered its ability to run business smoothly. Atruvia had to maintain and manage valuable data for a massive network of banks, including 7,500 branches all over Germany. The sheer volume of transactions also posed significant challenges. 

The scalability of its systems was increasingly tested due to immense data growth, where Atruvia had to manage 22 petabytes of raw capacity scattered across nine MetroCluster systems and more than 3,000 SSDs. With storage demands skyrocketing, object storage had to keep up. With more and more S3-native workloads now using the same StorageGRID solution, Atruvia had to scale to tens of petabytes and keep that available and performant.

Atruvia had clear goals to enhance system efficiency: optimize costs while meeting compliance and performance requirements. It saw potential in StorageGRID load balancing to resolve scalability issues and accommodate rapid data growth.

Additionally, the company recognized the need to enhance automation in its processes by utilizing Ansible playbooks across its extensive OpenShift container platform. This adoption would help streamline operations and secure more effective system management. Altogether, it was apparent that Atruvia was required to transform to surmount these challenges. 

To address these challenges and stay ahead of the curve, Atruvia enhanced its financial development platform. This FinDev platform combines the power of financial services with the agility of software development, enabling the provider to rapidly innovate and deliver customer-centric financial solutions. The framework empowers teams to adapt quickly to changing market dynamics, provide personalized banking experiences, and continually enhance its offerings to meet customer expectations in the fast-paced digital era.

Atruvia faced myriad technology and security challenges in the ever-evolving digital landscape. The company recognized the need to optimize IT infrastructure, enhance data storage capabilities, and fortify security protocols to protect sensitive customer information. To stay at the forefront of innovation and security, it sought the expertise of NetApp. This trusted technology partner could bolster technological capabilities and provide the utmost protection for Atruvia’s valued customers.

Atruvia implemented a range of solutions tailored to tackle specific challenges, focusing on enhancing technical infrastructure and streamlining operations. Upgrades included advanced infrastructure improvements and software solutions to boost efficiency, scalability, and performance. Below are the key components:

• NetApp StorageGRID enabled seamless scalability to accommodate demands of tens of petabytes of data.
• NetApp MetroCluster combined strong disaster recovery capabilities and cutting-edge data protection, providing vital business continuity and data integrity across critical systems.
• NetApp ONTAP features like FabricPool automated data tiering, Snapshot™ technology, and encryption improved workflows and helped assure regulatory compliance.  

NetApp has significantly transformed the provider’s operations. “With NetApp solutions, we’ve seen extraordinary growth while maintaining our core promise of stable, secure banking IT for our customers,” said Oliver Fuckner, Systems Engineer, Open Systems & Backup at Atruvia AG.

The optimization of StorageGRID cut capacity usage in half, dramatically reducing storage expenses. Additionally, scalability was improved, enabling up to two years of organic growth without further object storage capacity investments. This gives Atruvia flexibility to adapt to future demands.

Its expansive utilization of MetroCluster systems merits a mention. This robust setup attests to NetApp solutions’ reliability and high performance in processing and managing critical banking data. The adoption of all-flash systems emphasizes technological advancement and investment in efficient data storage infrastructure. 

Finally, NetApp's robust security features, including autonomous ransomware protection and two-factor admin verification, have strengthened data security at Atruvia. These solutions have helped the bank meet regulatory demands and maintain data integrity. 

For more than 20 years, Atruvia’s partnership with NetApp has been a cornerstone of its operational success and the establishment of customer trust. By leveraging NetApp's solutions, Atruvia has been able to meet the rigorous regulatory demands of the European banking sector while maintaining data integrity and defending against ever-sophisticated cyber threats. 

Atruvia offers valuable lessons for other enterprises embarking on their digital transformation journeys. Scalability and modularity in IT architecture are key factors in enabling flexibility for future growth. This approach allows businesses to adapt to evolving needs and seamlessly integrate new technologies as they emerge. Automation tools like Ansible have significantly enhanced productivity and streamlined operations.

Digital transformation in banking unlocks new opportunities for innovation and sustainable growth. Atruvia believes in technology's power to revolutionize how financial institutions operate and serve their customers. 

Looking ahead, Atruvia plans to build on its existing infrastructure with exciting new projects on the horizon. With continued support from NetApp, the company remains well-positioned to drive innovation and stay ahead in its digital journey.