Julius Baer empowers software engineers to develop market-leading products with an Azure-based modern developer cloud Platform.

“For banks, what really makes commodity applications appealing is that you can build them yourself and tailor them to the customer base you have. It’s become very clear that we must empower software developers with cloud technology if we want to achieve this in an effective way.” 

Marc Ellenberger, Head of Application and Development Platforms at Julius Baer, is explaining the motivations behind the bank’s recent cloud transformation which aimed to improve the efficiency of its software development. 

“For many years, the organization had been operating in a traditional way, using manual development processes,” explains Ellenberger. “Software engineers would develop within the confines of the bank’s infrastructure, leading to slow turnaround and even slower innovation. 

“So, we decided to migrate operations to Microsoft Azure to create a DevCloud. This helped to drastically speed up software development, improve agility and scalability, and provide a state-of-the-art workplace to attract and retain talent.” 

A shift towards digitalization and automation has since inspired a transformation across the whole of the bank. At Julius Baer, championing innovation is about more than providing developers with the freedom to build products. “For us,” says Ellenberger, “it’s about leveraging digital solutions that ultimately help to improve the success of our customers.”

A traditional infrastructure stifles innovation

Since establishing in 1890, Swiss bank Julius Baer has been a powerhouse in the wealth management sector. It offers a variety of services including investment management, real estate advisory and a selection of sales and trading services. With headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, its 6,700 employees are based in offices across 25 countries worldwide.

As the bank has been growing rapidly, it’s become more important than ever to build competitive products that better serve its customer base. But traditionally, the bank’s software engineers developed inside the bank’s infrastructure, which proved challenging when trying to build desirable products. 

“To have access to the on-prem infrastructure,” says Ellenberger, “each developer needed to undergo bureaucratic onboarding procedures that were both costly and time consuming. In addition, due to these limitations and operational dependencies, the flexibility and performance of our development environments were restricted too.

Additionally, the exchange of information between the bank and its suppliers was very difficult. Much of the communication was by email and not centrally managed which was both inefficient and unreliable. 

"We needed an agile solution that made onboarding less laborious and gave software engineers the freedom to work from a new environment and collaborate seamlessly with other developers and vendors,” says Ellenberger. “We soon came to realize that to stay ahead of the curve in the industry, moving from on-prem to a cloud-based solution was the answer.”

The potential of cloud technology is realized

The initiative began back in 2020, when Julius Baer created a pilot cloud which focused solely on a single collaboration tool. However, it wasn’t sufficient enough to help the software engineering team build, develop and deploy products efficiently. 

“We knew we had to set our ambitions a little higher,” says Filipe Abrahao, Global Head of Software Engineering at Julius Baer. “We wanted to build an automated self-service Platform in the cloud. So, we began to work towards migrating all development operations to Microsoft Azure.” 

The bank enlisted help from Microsoft partner Monostream, a cloud computing and software boutique based in Zurich, to help build a DevCloud. Monostream were able to address the bank’s software development and security needs quickly and directly. 

“A year later our newly established DevCloud was hosting 30-40 programs and 10 vendors,” explains Abrahao. “Along with Monostream, we were able to implement the technology so quickly because we only allowed synthetic data into the cloud. To ensure security requirements were met, we also established a strict one-way software flow to the bank that prevented any data flow from the bank to the cloud. This ensured that no sensitive data was at risk.”

During this time, Julius Baer also worked to reshape its culture. “Younger developers were excited to explore the new technology, but it took a little longer to bring older developers onboard,” says Abrahao. “With the success of the early projects, we had soon opened everyone’s eyes to the possibilities that Microsoft Azure could bring. Now we had the tools, people were excited to start building products themselves, rather than commission external organizations.” 

The bank’s DevCloud has proved so successful that today, there are more than 1,900 users and 40 vendors working on around 100 Azure native services, including Azure API Management and Azure Kubernetes Service, that are being used at the core of DevCloud.

Banking on the DevCloud pays off

“The DevCloud has been a gamechanger for Julius Baer,” says Ellenberger. “It has opened another dimension of flexibility and access to cutting-edge applications that were not available when our infrastructure was on-prem. Microsoft Azure’s tools and functionalities have enabled the organization to support an agile transformation which allows software engineers to work and collaborate securely from anywhere, anytime.

“Our reputation has also been improved by implementing Microsoft Azure. The banking sector has long held the stigma of being archaic in its approach to technological advancements, but with our new innovative workspace, we are able to attract the best developers and retain valued members of our team.”

Onboarding both new and existing developers to the cloud has also been reduced from weeks or months to hours or days. Vendors are integrated smoothly into the DevCloud as access is managed centrally. Many other processes have also been automated from software assurance to vulnerability scanning. As a result, the DevCloud can now guarantee a certain quality and high-level security in the code. 

“Through automation in the cloud,” says Ellenberger, “the development team’s speed and productivity has dramatically increased too. Rather than taking weeks to have a development environment up and running, it now happens in a matter of hours. 

“At Julius Baer we can now minimize time-to-market for digital innovation and can empower our software engineers to envision and build the best customer-centric solutions that are focused on value creation.” 

Pioneering innovation in the Swiss financial sector

Now in the thick of transformation, an exciting future lies ahead for Julius Baer. The organization intends to build on the foundation of Microsoft technology they have in place and discussions are in motion regarding what direction to take the DevCloud in. 

“We believe that the DevCloud has a lot of untapped potential that could enable us to be even faster and more proficient,” says Ellenberger. “We want to find ways to help developers to maximize their experience of the DevCloud and while providing rapid feedback production.

“Ideally, we would like to have a greater overview of how developers are building software so that we can better support them. We also intend to create a continuous delivery pipeline and integrate all the release management processes so everything is leaner.”

Having seen the success, capabilities and potential of Microsoft Azure, Julius Baer have set high ambitions for the future. “We’ve gone from being a traditional bank with many development limitations to a modern organization that’s innovating at speed,” says Ellenberger. “We hope other traditional financial institutions are inspired by the work we have done with our DevCloud and look to explore the possibilities that cloud technology can bring for them too.”