European DataWarehouse

Vision

Market and regulations require a new IT approach from EDW

Based in Frankfurt since their founding in 2012, European DataWarehouse (EDW) is largest database for securitization transactions in Europe. At that time, the market was in the throes of a financial crisis and EDW was created to create transparency and restore trust. They collect individual credit data from issuers and carry out quality checks to ensure the quality of all data. This data is used by investors, central banks, advisory firms, rating agencies and other users to make informed decisions about investments or strategies.

In this highly volatile environment, IT infrastructure plays a critical role. With a deadline from the European Central Bank to move to new, cloud-based solution on the horizon, EDW needed to ensure they were able to meet the new compliance requirements. Without the internal resources and expertise to migrate quickly and smoothly to the cloud, they looked a partner to enable this process, while meeting the highest security and compliance. EDW selected us as a managed service provider to advise on the transformation of the business, define the roadmap for a successful migration, while bringing together their different systems and solutions into a highly available end-to-end service, allowing the company to focus on its core business.

"Internally, we don’t have the capacity to successfully transform our IT. It makes no sense to develop and manage infrastructure and services yourself. Trusted partners with specialist knowledge can do this better. Rather, we want to focus on our core business to drive innovation. And this is where a managed service partner can make a real difference," explains Dr Christian Thun, CEO of EDW.

Transformation

EDW leverages managed cloud for greater agility and lower costs

Working together, we initially migrated EDW’s applications and data to a highly available private cloud to benefit from the flexibility, scalability and cost savings of the platform.

With Brexit approaching, EDW wanted to host their existing disaster-recovery workloads in two data centers in continental Europe.

With the introduction of new EU banking regulations (ESMA STS) in 2017, it was no longer necessary to use the private cloud environment. With the aim of optimizing the agility and scalability of their environment, reducing fixed costs, and enabling innovative approaches to their application development environment, they decided to move their business applications to Microsoft Azure. The new operating model enables EDW to easily deploy and use additional platform services, most notably data lake and artificial intelligence (AI).

In 2021, EDW decided to implement a data repository in the UK – comparable to the one already available in continental Europe. This was key in enabling EDW to meet the requirements set by British regulators after Brexit.

With data from British banks that had previously been stored in the EU needing to be moved to a data center in the UK, we set up the infrastructure and ensured that the data transfer was carried out in accordance relevant regulations.

This was possible because of the fast availability and replicability created as part of their move to Azure.

Leveraging our expertise and the solution developed by NTT, we were able to replicate the process used in Germany to ensure a seamless migration of data to the UK.

Results

Shifting IT from a cost to a value center

With the help of our managed cloud solution, EDW was able to migrate quickly, securely and cost-effectively to Microsoft Azure. EDW has reduced its reliance on a traditional data center model and reduced operating costs. They now have time to focus on their core business of providing innovative applications to their customers.

More flexibility

EDW has a complete solution that helps to respond to customer requirements quickly and with increased scalability. With the expected growth in data volume and users, the cloud offers them the flexibility, scalability and agility they need. Users can access the cloud from any device to access risk analyses anywhere, anytime.

Reduced operating expenses

With the move to the public cloud, EDW was able to reduce its monthly operating costs by up to 25%. The managed service contract eliminated complex hardware procurement as well as costs for commissioning and ongoing operation.

Scope for innovation

EDW can focus on their core business with the development and management of the state-of-the-art IT environment in experienced hands. The Azure cloud platform also offers a range of comprehensive services, allowing the company to cost-effectively develop a loan-level application.

Highest security

EDW can benefit from a secure and highly compliant cloud solution. This ranges from infrastructure and network design to deploying and monitoring business-critical applications.

"We’ve achieved all the benefits we hoped for from our move to the cloud. Without NTT and Microsoft Azure, we wouldn’t have been able to keep our branch in England after Brexit. In accordance with regulatory requirements, we were able to move the data of British banks from our German location to a British data center in just one weekend." says Dr Christian Thun, EDW CEO.