How DevOps, Microservices, and MongoDB are Making HSBC “Simpler, Better, and Faster”

Mat Keep
July 25, 2017 | Updated: September 9, 2019
#Customer Stories

A digital revolution is happening at HSBC. As one of the world's largest banking and financial services organizations, the company is building global digital solutions that will help customers worldwide to manage their personal and business finances.

The drive for digital innovation comes as part of a series of strategic actions set out by HSBC’s board to adopt technology that makes HSBC “simpler, better and faster”. To achieve that goal HSBC has embraced agile ways of working. Technology teams are championing a DevOps culture and microservices design approach, while harnessing the next generation of technologies like MongoDB – which is helping HSBC to simplify, migrate and manage complex data change.

Data is at the core of HSBC’s innovation. Nick Maybin, Development Manager, and Andrew Matthews, Equities Architect, HSBC, shared some powerful statistics in their “Bye Bye Legacy: Simplifying the Journey” session at this year’s MongoDB World conference. From data assets totaling 56PB in 2014, the HSBC team expects to see these grow to 93PB by the end of this year.

One area of HSBC that is particularly data driven is the trading technology teams. As part of a collaborative initiative the trading teams in London are using MongoDB to build an Operational Data Store for trades to enable, equip and engage trading desks, salespeople and operations teams across the world, rapidly serving up data consistently and reliably from a single source of truth For example, the Operational Data Store will help users access data on complex markets like Equities and Fixed Income. This includes simple instruments like bonds and shares, but also many other types of more intricate products such as futures, forwards, options and derivatives trading.

Previously this data would have been stored in relational databases, but in the quest to better serve users the team are migrating to MongoDB. The reasons align with the board’s goal of finding technology that would make HSBC simpler, better and faster:

  • Simpler – Compared to relational tables, MongoDB’s document data model mean it is significantly simpler to model bonds, swaps and equity products. While each of these assets are instruments, they all need to store different attributes – something known as polymorphism. MongoDB’s flexible document data model makes it simple to manage this type of data variability. With a dynamic schema, it is also easier to make changes for new data types or for regulatory reasons. Finally, MongoDB makes life simpler for the Ops part of DevOps by providing high availability, scale and security, right out of the box. HSBC operates multiple data centers around the world. The existing relational databases required manual failover to recover service in the event of an outage – a process that is difficult to configure. MongoDB’s self-healing replica sets largely eliminate the complexity in creating a resilient, always-on database infrastructure.
  • Better – HSBC’s Operational Data Store is being built with numerous microservices using native end-to-end JSON data structures that extend from the client, through to the apps, and the market data itself. The flexibility of MongoDB’s data model allows HSBC to manage complex data modeling better, including bitemporal data, providing a way of storing historical data across two separate timelines. Take a look at the slides to learn more about how the HSBC developers model bitemporal data with MongoDB.
  • Faster – this is not just faster response times, but a perhaps even more important type of speed: organisational change. The Operational Data Store is demonstrating the value of adopting new technology and development processes. HSBC has a large DevOps Programme underway and application teams are changing their approaches, enabled by more flexible technologies. Shifting from traditional siloed teams, segregated by management hierarchy, into much more cross functional groups with self-sufficient, multi-disciplinary pods. All of which is helping the company move faster with a more entrepreneurial approach. Review the slides to learn more about the roles of technical staff, communicators, and influencers in driving technology change.

    • HSBC believes the technology ideas of today, will be the intuitive habits of tomorrow. The trading teams’ migration away from relational databases, is another demonstration of how impactful that can be, with MongoDB enabling fast iteration for new applications and helping to support a shift in culture. It’s no surprise HSBC was a clear winner in this year’s MongoDB Innovation Award for Data Driven Business.

    To learn more about its journey to a data-driven business, take a look at HSBC’s talk: “Bye Bye Legacy: Simplifying the Journey”

    Download our whitepaper to learn more about how microservices are enabling modern application development.

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MongoDB World 2017 Recap

Thank you to our attendees and sponsors who attended MongoDB World 2017! Were you unable to make the event? Don’t worry. We’ve put together our favorite highlights from this year’s conference. MongoDB World Video Recap Launch of MongoDB Stitch Backend as a Service (BaaS) We released a beta of MongoDB Stitch , our BaaS for MongoDB, designed for the way modern web and mobile apps are built. Stitch is the next phase of MongoDB's mission to dramatically increase developer productivity by eliminating routine and undifferentiated tasks. The service lets you focus on building the app users want instead of taking time to write boilerplate backend logic. Stitch also provides developers full access to MongoDB, the ability to declare fine-grained data access controls, and composability with other services - whether those be internal microservices, or external web services such as FaceBook and Google for authentication, Twilio, Slack, AWS (S3, SES, SQS), GCM, and more. The MongoDB Stitch FAQ is a great place to learn more. MongoDB Atlas Database as a Service: Now Available on GCP and Azure We have extended the availability of MongoDB Atlas beyond Amazon Web Services (AWS) to include Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Microsoft Azure. The addition of support for Azure and GCP allows teams to easily gain the productivity benefits from MongoDB’s flexible data model and expressive query language on their preferred public cloud. Organizations can feel confident that their managed MongoDB deployments are in close proximity to their applications, secure, always on, and fully elastic. Eliot Horowitz Keynote At MongoDB World, Eliot Horowitz, CTO and Co-Founder, explained his commitment to improving, expanding, and innovating on MongoDB. Along with the launch of Stitch and expanding Atlas, Eliot also discussed the forthcoming MongoDB 3.6 release and announced some exciting new features. New improvements include: Extending the $lookup operator to support more expressive JOIN operators Strict document validation for data governance Change streams, implementing an API on top of the oplog Retryable writes, meaning the MongoDB driver will automatically retry writes in the event of failure Watch the full session here to learn even more about these new features. 2017 Innovation Award Winners Honored The annual MongoDB Innovation Awards recognized organizations and individuals that are creating groundbreaking applications. These projects represent the best and most innovative work in the industry over the last year. A full list of the winners and a brief description of their projects is outlined in our blog post . Startup Accelerator The MongoDB Startup Accelerator helps early-stage startups access services that will help grow their business by offering products, support, and resources aimed at helping them succeed. MongoDB and AWS have partnered to offer MongoDB Atlas credits, technical support, and mentorship to select startups, enabling them to scale their businesses. Advocacy We hosted our annual Advocacy Summit, where we invited 50 of our community leaders for an opportunity to connect with the MongoDB team and meet other fellow Advocates face-to-face. The Advocates got to meet the engineering team, offer product feedback, and share their knowledge and expertise with other practitioners. Partner Summit Over 120 participants from 60+ partner organizations, including global service integrators, OEM, consulting and services firms, resellers and technology companies, attended the 3rd Annual MongoDB Partner Summit. MongoDB executives shared our vision with the MongoDB partner ecosystem. We discussed how MongoDB is addressing the top challenges facing enterprises, and how we can work together with our partners to deliver enhanced value to our customers. Attendees were briefed on our proven best practices and frameworks to help organizations establish a single view, modernize legacy applications, operate leaner by offloading reliance on mainframes and embrace emerging technologies, such as blockchain. The summit also featured a fireside chat with Ben Falk , former VP of Basketball Strategy for Philadelphia 76ers, who discussed the rapid adoption of analytics in sports to make smarter decisions on and off the field. The open and interactive format of the summit allowed us to gather invaluable feedback, and provide attendees with insights into future areas of technology investment. Top Customer Sessions Take a look at some of our top rated customer sessions! Want to watch more? Head over to our website which has over 80 recordings from MongoDB World! Comcast: Private-Cloud Self-Service MongoDB at Scale 200 Application Arch When architecting a MongoDB application, one of the most difficult questions to answer is how much hardware am I going to need for an application, and how do you estimate your monthly AWS, Azure, or GCP costs given a description of a new application. In this session, Jay Runkel, Principal Solution Architect at MongoDB & Jayson Hurd at Comcast, help you answer these questions. Best Practices for Running MongoDB on AWS: A Snagajob Case Study In this session, the Snagajob team discusses their migration to AWS and how following MongoDB's best practice recommendations helped in shaping Snagajob's next-generation platform. This platform provides a future-proof architecture that is scalable, performs under load, and is secure. MongoDB Atlas - eHarmony’s New Message Store Communication is an integral part of eHarmony’s business. In this presentation, the eHarmony team covers how they were able to leverage MongoDB Atlas to overcome communication challenges they were facing, to build a highly successful real time communication system for its users. If you weren’t able to join us in Chicago for MongoDB World 2017, don’t worry, we have some upcoming events you won’t want to miss: MongoDB on Tour SF Join us on October 12th in San Francisco to hear from the team that builds the database, including CTO and Co-Founder Eliot Horowitz at MongoDB on Tour SF! Come ready to learn all about the fundamentals to advanced techniques of app design and performance management. The day will be filled with hands-on, deep-dive technical sessions, equipping you with the tools you need to build and deploy your giant ideas. Register now! MongoDB Europe Couldn’t make it to MongoDB World 2017 or want to relive the excitement? MongoDB Europe is November 8th! It is the best one day educational conference that provides technical knowledge and new skills to accelerate your use of MongoDB. This event will feature some of our greatest sessions and presenters, as well as new product announcements. You won’t want to miss out, so don’t forget to register now!

July 24, 2017
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Data and the European Landscape: 3 Trends for 2022

The past two years have brought massive changes for IT leaders: large and complex cloud migrations; unprecedented numbers of people suddenly working, shopping and learning from home; and a burst in demand for digital-first experiences. Like everyone else, we are hoping that 2022 isn’t so disruptive (fingers crossed!), our customer conversations in Europe do lead us to believe the new year will bring new business priorities. We’re already noticing changes in conversations around vendor lock-in, thanks to the Digital Markets Act, a new enthusiasm for combining operational and analytical data to drive new insights faster, and a more strategic embrace of sustainability. Here’s how we see these trends playing out in 2022. Digital markets act draws new attention to cloud vendor lock-in in Europe We’ve heard plenty about the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act , which, in the name of ensuring fair and open digital markets, would place new restrictions on companies that are deemed to be digital “gatekeepers” in the region. That discussion will be nothing compared to the vigorous debate we expect once the EU begins the very tricky political business of determining exactly which companies will fall under the act. If the EU sets the bar for revenues, users, and market size high enough, it’s possible that the regulation will end up affecting only Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft. But a European group representing 2,500 CIOs and almost 700 organizations is now pushing to have the regulation encompass more software companies. Their main concern centers around “distorted competition” in cloud infrastructure services and a worry that companies are being locked into one cloud vendor. A trend that will likely increase in 2022 that pushes back on cloud vendor lock-in is embracing multi-cloud strategies. We should expect to see more organisations in the region pursuing multi-cloud environments as a means to improve business continuity and agility whilst being able to access best of breed services from each cloud provider. As we have always said …”it’s fine to date your cloud provider….but don’t ever marry them.” The convergence of operational and analytical data The processing of operational and analytical data is almost always contained in different data systems, each tuned to that use case and managed by separate teams. But because that data lives in separate places, it’s almost impossible for organisations to generate insights and automate actions in real time, against live data. We believe 2022 is the year we’ll see a critical mass of companies in the region make significant progress toward a convergence of their operational and analytical data. We’re already starting to see some of the principles of microservices in operational applications, such as domain ownership, be applied to analytics as well. We’re hearing about this from so many of our customers locally, who are looking at MongoDB as an application data platform that allows them to perform queries across both real-time and historical data, using a unified platform and a single query API. This results in the applications they are building becoming more intelligent and contextual to their users, while avoiding dependencies on centralized analytics teams that otherwise slow down how quickly new, data-driven experiences can be released. Sustainability drives local strategic IT choice Technology always has some environmental cost. Sometimes that’s obvious — such as the energy needs and emissions associated with Bitcoin mining. More often, though, the environmental costs are well hidden. The European Green Deal commits the European Union to reducing emissions by 55% by 2030, with a focus on sustainable industry. With the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP26) recently completed in Glasgow, and coming off the hottest European summer on record, climate issues have become top of mind. That means our customers are increasingly looking to make their technical operations more sustainable — including in their choice of cloud provider and data centers. According to research from IDC , more than 20% of CxOs say that sustainability is now important in selecting a strategic cloud service provider, and some 29% of CxOs are including sustainability into their RFPs for cloud services. Most interesting, 26% say they are willing to switch to providers with better sustainability credentials. Historically, it’s been difficult to make a switch like that. That’s part of the reason we built MongoDB Atlas — to give our customers the flexibility to run in any region , with any of the three largest cloud providers, and to make it easy to switch between them, and even to run a single database cluster across them. Publicly available information about the footprint of individual regions and even single data centers will make it simpler for companies to make informed decisions. Already, at least one cloud platform has added indicators to regions with the lowest carbon footprint. Source: IDC, European Customers Engage Services Providers at All Stages of Their Cloud Journey, IDC Survey Spotlight, Doc #EUR248484021, Dec 2021

December 21, 2021