CASE STUDY
IN THE FINANCIAL SECTOR, SECURITY, DEVELOPMENT TRANSPARENCY, AND LONG-TERM VENDOR SUPPORT ARE CRITICAL.
Minimising operational risk: was also essential. Each step was designed with flexibility and rollback options in mind, with full control over application, network and data dependencies. For resource consolidation, we used the opportunity to reduce physical servers from 46 to 18 and virtual machines from 400 to 150 – simplifying management and lowering operating costs.
Parallel buildout of virtualised and container environments saw us simultaneously build the new Red Hat OpenShift-based architecture, requiring real-time coordination of two parallel environments – virtualised and containerised.
What are your expectations for this next phase of your modernisation journey, particularly in terms of security, integrations, and network automation, and how will it further enhance your IT infrastructure management?
The modernisation effort was aimed not only at improving operational efficiency but also at strengthening digital resilience and ensuring compliance with European regulations such as DORA.
Key areas of improvement include Zero Trust infrastructure. The new Red Hat OpenShift-based architecture – combined with Infrastructure as Code – enables access control, segmentation, user and component verification and continuous activity monitoring. This fully supports a Zero Trust approach in line with DORA expectations.
Integrated vulnerability and patch management means we use Red Hat OpenShift’ s built-in solutions to monitor and automatically patch vulnerabilities( CVEs) across both operating systems and container images.
Improved operational resilience and continuity means failover between data centres has been reduced to 30 minutes, and full environment provisioning can be done in an hour – directly supporting DORA’ s requirements for maintaining continuity of critical business functions.
Using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, we have standardised deployment practices and gained control over changes – reducing misconfiguration risks and improving predictability.
The unified Red Hat platform also provides real-time visibility into systems and access management. This significantly streamlines reporting duties and facilitates compliance audits.
The project involved upgrading two data centres and migrating operating environments. What were some of the key considerations and challenges during this migration process?
Migrating environments and modernising two data centres was one of the most technically complex and strategic stages of our transformation. The process had to be precise and maintain continuity for all critical business systems – without compromising service availability.
The migration had to occur without business interruptions. We executed a phased migration strategy that enabled gradual reconfiguration without affecting production systems.
With the foundation now in place, Red Hat OpenShift consolidated infrastructure and operational automation. Our focus is shifting toward enhancing security, expanding automation, adapting applications to cloud-native architecture and deepening system integration.
In terms of security, we aim to fully adopt DevSecOps policies and continue automating control and configuration. Using Infrastructureas-Code, we can maintain environment consistency, minimise risks and ensure full auditability – essential for DORA compliance.
In terms of integration, we are moving toward an API-first approach to standardise communication between services and microservices. Our goal is to build an environment where new components can be deployed quickly, securely and with full testability and observability.
What broader strategic advantages has this infrastructure upgrade brought to B2 Impact and how do you see these contributing to B2 Impact’ s competitive edge in the debt collection market?
The infrastructure modernisation – carried out in partnership with Red Hat – has delivered long-term strategic value, significantly boosting our operational agility, resilience and ability to innovate in the debt management sector.
One of our most impactful architectural decisions was to move away from VMware in favor of Red Hat OpenShift as a unified platform for both virtualisation and containerisation. This allowed us to simplify our architecture, eliminate dependencies on multiple platforms and build a unified environment that is scalable, open and automated.
The direct benefits include:
• Better cost efficiency and simpler management,
• Faster deployment of environments and improved control over the application lifecycle
• Freedom from restrictive licensing models.
The shift to Red Hat OpenShift has shortened our time to market, improved operational decision-making, and provided a more resilient and standardised infrastructure – ultimately giving us a real competitive advantage in a data-intensive and regulation-driven industry. Our collaboration with Red Hat has been a turning point – laying the foundation for both technological and business growth. p
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