BMW Group - Case study

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Project Summary.

Services provided:

Cloud Migration and Modernisation DevOps Support Managed Cloud Environment Platform engineering

In partnership with:

AWS Azure

Client industry:

Automotive

Client location:

Germany

Project background.

When the BMW Group wanted a robust way to manage cloud governance and operations as it scaled across both Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, Nordcloud was chosen as the partner for developing the platform.

The ambition was to have a Public Cloud Platform that would be a central gateway to the cloud, enabling all product owners and application teams to access cloud services in a compliant and efficient way.

This is part of an ambitious digital roadmap, with public cloud central to a cloud-first transformation strategy, leveraging both Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, to develop a truly global PaaS and IaaS platform.

Challenges.

Central gateway to the cloud

Requirement of a Public Cloud Platform that enabled rapid global provisioning and management of cloud resources for the whole BMW Group.

Operational excellence & automation

The need for highly available platform with full DevOps tooling including toolchain and pipelines is needed.

Multi-cloud governance & security

Resources provisioned and managed through the platform needed to have in-built configurations and security to ensure compliance at scale.

We wanted to be a partner who had the vision and the skills to work across both clouds, deal with complex global operational and regulatory requirements and bring true cloud-native, agile and DevOps thinking to the project.

Richard Zimmermann

CTO Germany, Nordcloud

Integrated & collaborative

Through an integrated, collaborative process, the BMW Group worked with our cloud architects, solution architects, UI designers, application development specialists and managed cloud engineers, as well as Azure specialists at our partner XIBIX.

Agile working

Platform development has been 100% DevOps using the BMW Group’s proven Agile Working Model.

At the beginning, Nordcloud agile experts structured project delivery processes and we continuously improved ways of working as the project progressed.

Solution.

Multi-cloud model

We developed the Public Cloud Platform to go above and beyond standard Azure and AWS tools, providing a common operational model for both clouds.

The platform provides standardised, automated and pre-developed cloud infrastructure, so internal teams can use self-service/APIs and develop rapidly while aligning with established rules.

For example, users can automatically create new accounts and subscriptions directly in the platform without having to raise a ticket or wait for an internal, manual process.

The project was a true collaboration. The multidisciplinary Nordcloud team included everyone from architects and UI designers to managed cloud engineers and agile coaches, as well as our partners at XIBIX.

We also worked as a unified team with the BMW Group, proactively making suggestions and aligning with the team’s objectives and key results. It was a major effort where we built highly scalable and cloud native solutions for the BMW Group’s fast growing public cloud footprint.

Thomas Baus

Region Leader DACH, Nordcloud

Scalability

In one year, there has been a 50% increase in cloud rooms. More than 50.000 self-service requests were processed – all via automation.

Security & Compliance

Integrated security features ensure end-to-end monitoring and enforcement of security and regulatory rules.

Added Operational Excellence

The platform has been highly available, with metrics showing great trends: usage increased significantly while the number of tickets decreased year on year.