UBS and GitLab collaborate to bring software development to the next level

Mike Dargan, Head of UBS Group Technology: "Agile and DevOps, in conjunction with our cloud journey, are the way to offer even more dynamic, higher quality, and more efficient software engineering. This is the essence of our DevCloud which we want to be the best developer experience in the market."

The strategic collaboration with GitLab is at the heart of DevCloud, which revolutionizes UBS's ability to cover the entire development process with just one DevOps platform and will advance UBS on its journey to a modernized cloud based and service oriented software development lifecycle. By delighting its developers, UBS ensures it is always driving to the best digital solutions. 

The goal of the collaboration with GitLab, is to enable UBS's engineers to develop in the cloud and to fully realise the benefits of DevOps and an agile software development approach. This is expected to increase quality and decrease time-to-market significantly: UBS expects to more than double the speed of software engineering by the end of 2021. DevCloud is also expected to provide the means for full end-to-end automation of the development pipeline.

Mike Dargan: "GitLab will be a fundamental part of our cloud journey, and thus accelerate our strategy. With GitLab, we leapfrog many of our competitors and break the barriers between coding, testing, and deployment. In addition we expect this technology to enable us to engineer our cloud native applications as well as our traditional banking applications from one platform." 

GitLab offers a single application for the entire DevOps lifecycle which aims to increase efficiency by eliminating communications between different tools, and decreases maintenance costs. Developers, operators, and auditors have access to the same information and thus the ability to drill from a global view to a single repository.

In addition to efficiency, further strengthening UBS's proven stability and resilience is a major driver for UBS to implement one single DevOps platform. The highly automated – and therefore shortened and less error prone – cycle between coding, testing and deployment is beneficial for the bank's applications.

“GitLab is thrilled to collaborate with UBS on their DevOps journey,” said Michael McBride, CRO at GitLab. “We look forward to supporting UBS in their goal to increase efficiency as teams work on a single platform for DevSecOps. A key GitLab differentiator is built-in security at every step of the development lifecycle. This unparalleled approach to DevSecOps sets GitLab apart as customers can be faster and more secure at the same time.”

GitLab’s DevOps platform cloud paired with UBS’s custom extensions redefines the bank's developing and engineering experience: Product owners from the different businesses, software developers as well as test and tech operators have access to the same information and collaborate closely in order to enable the bank to meet and excel its client’s needs. 

UBS and GitLab are members of the Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS), which addresses common industry challenges and drives innovation in the finance sector. The cooperation aims at also contributing to and benefiting from the standardization and wider adoption of security frameworks and financial tools. These standards will be sharable with other financial industries and are expected to contribute to the overall development of banking of the future as well as increase of efficiency and cooperation within the ecosystem.