Westpac Advances Infrastructure Automation with Red Hat, Focusing on Customer Experience
Westpac is evolving its infrastructure automation strategy, shifting from a focus on internal optimization to delivering improvements directly to its customers. According to a recent presentation by a Westpac representative, the bank’s initial automation efforts centered on streamlining operations, minimizing manual tasks, and mitigating human error. The future direction, however, prioritizes automation that will fundamentally change the IT habitat and enhance the customer journey for millions of Australians.
The bank’s automation initiatives aim to empower internal teams and projects to efficiently provision, secure, and manage IT resources, ultimately supporting the services used by its customer base. Westpac initially leveraged AWX, a free and open-source Ansible automation controller, to manage and execute automation tasks.
Recognizing the need for robust support, Westpac has transitioned to Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform (AAP), the enterprise-supported version of the technology. While acknowledging the value of AWX and its accessibility within the open-source community, the bank steadfast that 24/7 support was crucial for ensuring reliable service delivery to customers.
The move to AAP has yielded benefits beyond just support. Westpac engineers now have access to specialized training provided by Red Hat, and a direct engineering connection with Red Hat teams allows for faster problem-solving and solution progress across all Red Hat products. Furthermore, Westpac now has a voice in shaping the future direction of AAP and other Red hat offerings, recently influencing the development of its event-driven automation engine to support highly available automated platforms.
Tertius Bouwer, a Red Hat automation sales specialist, confirmed a long-standing dialog with Westpac regarding the benefits of the commercially supported platform. He noted that Westpac had already achieved a high level of automation maturity with AWX, but AAP aligned with the bank’s planned evolution of its infrastructure automation capabilities. The strengthened partnership between the two organizations was a key factor in the decision.
Currently, AAP is deployed on Red Hat OpenShift across Westpac’s data centers, utilizing cross-site load balancing for resilience. The bank is now concentrating on two key areas: event-driven automation and AIOps.
Event-driven automation will enable Westpac to monitor key event sources and automatically trigger actions based on specific occurrences, frequently enough leveraging pre-existing automated tasks to maximize return on investment. AIOps, utilizing artificial intelligence, is being implemented to proactively identify and address potential issues, reducing the risk of outages and improving overall service quality for customers.
