Max Finance accelerates innovation with Red Hat OpenShift
Max, one of Israel’s top credit card companies, leads the competition in the payments industry by emphasizing technology and innovation. To align with its strategic goals and inspire its developers, Max needed a scalable and consistent platform for application development. Working with Red Hat, the company implemented Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift to streamline application development and support its hybrid cloud strategy. This has accelerated time to market and increased efficiency, and now supports uninterrupted transitions between on-premise and cloud environments.
Benefits:
- Accelerated time to market for application updates
- Increased IT efficiency and flexibility
- Delivered consistent developer experiences
Maintaining a competitive advantage with innovative digital services
Max Finance has over 3 million credit cards in circulation and provides payment processing services to merchants and banks throughout Israel. In a competitive industry, Max stands out by using the latest technology to maximize efficiency and business agility. Its technological focus allows the company to deliver exceptional customer service while boosting profitability and expanding its market share.
With a team of 100 developers, Max uses agile methodologies to create digital systems for underlying critical business functions including customer onboarding, credit card issuance, and acquisition operations. The team’s innovative solutions include unique features such as a credit card that offers cashback in cryptocurrency. Its development teams also work to build security-focused, scalable systems to support open banking.
To further develop this ongoing innovation, Max required a robust application development platform capable of supporting microservices architecture, DevOps practices, and containerized applications.
“Our development platform needs to be highly scalable and flexible, supporting seamless workload transitions between on-premise and cloud environments to avoid vendor lock-in,” said Laurent Nahum, Deputy Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Head of Business platforms and Infrastructure, Max.
Boosting innovation and efficiency with a consistent hybrid cloud platform
Max worked with Red Hat to create a strategic roadmap that aligns with its technological needs. “Red Hat understands our goals and what we need to achieve them,” said Nahum. “It is not just about the technology—it is about the people behind it.”
Collaborating with Red Hat Services, the company began by deploying Red Hat OpenShift directly on physical servers. The Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform provides a consistent hybrid cloud foundation, allowing Max to efficiently build and scale containerized applications. To support its hybrid cloud strategy further, Max adopted Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift—a fully managed, ready-to-use application platform that helps organizations to streamline operations and focus on innovation.
Initially, Max deployed Red Hat OpenShift in small groups, but plans are underway to extend its use across all development teams. To accelerate adoption, Max is providing Red Hat Training to its staff.
Max deployed Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform—a unified solution for strategic automation—to help it to meet its efficiency goals while supporting an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) approach. By automating previously manual IT maintenance tasks with Ansible Playbooks, Max can make IT management faster and more robust.
Industry
Financial services
Headquarters
Bnei Brak, Israel
Size
1,900 employees
Software and services
Red Hat® OpenShift®, Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat Ansible® Automation Platform, Red Hat Training and Certification
Red Hat OpenShift provides a consistent focus on security, as well as monitoring, configuration, and control across hybrid environments, simplifying tasks and ensuring that we are not locked into any single cloud vendor.
Red Hat understands our goals and what we need to achieve them. It is not just about the technology—it is about the people behind it.
Achieving faster innovation and greater flexibility
Accelerated time to market for application updates
With Red Hat OpenShift solutions, Max can maintain a continuous cycle of software development and updates. “Red Hat OpenShift’s built-in continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) capabilities help our development teams release new features and updates quicker and more frequently, supporting our agile strategy,” said Nahum. “This speeds up innovation and bolsters our open banking initiatives.”
Increased IT efficiency and flexibility
Max was also focused on achieving standardization between its on-premise infrastructure and Microsoft Azure hyperscalers through Azure Red Hat OpenShift, providing a consistent hybrid deployment model. This standardization is key to Max’s ability to seamlessly move applications. Max can now move applications between on-premise and cloud environments, supporting its hybrid strategy with ease.
“Red Hat OpenShift provides a consistent focus on security, as well as monitoring, configuration, and control across hybrid environments, simplifying tasks and ensuring that we are not locked into any single cloud or virtualization vendor,” said Nahum.
MAX is leading the way by being the first to adopt this solution in Israel, which is generating growing interest from other companies. The use of Ansible Automation Platform to automate routine IT management tasks further boosts efficiency, ensuring consistency and reducing the risk of human error while freeing up employees for more strategic projects.
Delivered consistent developer experiences
Developers enjoy consistent experience whether working on digital innovations or day-to-day tasks. Red Hat OpenShift allows them to operate consistently across on-premise and cloud environments, and provides access to the latest development tools, reducing training needs while maximizing productivity.
“Our developers are excited about using Red Hat OpenShift,” said Nahum. “Red Hat solutions are a win-win for both our development teams and the business.”
Aligning development capabilities with strategic business goals
By partnering with Red Hat, Max has successfully aligned its business and IT strategies, using solutions that accelerate innovation and speed to market to strengthen its competitive edge. It also plans to upgrade to Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus, which offers multicluster security functions, compliance, and application and data management across infrastructures to ensure consistency throughout the software supply chain.
“As we continue to expand our use of Red Hat OpenShift across our development teams, we expect even greater efficiency and faster delivery of new features,” said Nahum. “Migrating applications to the cloud with Azure Red Hat OpenShift, and continuing our training efforts will further streamline our processes, increasing our ability to scale and innovate.”
About Max Finance
Max Finance is a payment and credit solutions company providing financial solutions for both retail customers and businesses - including tailored credit and lending solutions, as well as credit cards. Max operates as a subsidiary of Clal Insurance Enterprise Holdings.
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