BMW Group Accelerates High Performance Computing and IT Modernization with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Red Hat, the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that BMW Group has successfully migrated its High Performance Computing (HPC) environment to Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Standardizing its automation strategy enabled the BMW Group to modernize an existing, decades-old production system, simplify the management of 15,000 servers and speed up IT service delivery for 30,000 internal users.

BMW Group's HPC environment is critical to vehicle development and innovation. It supports performance-intensive applications like 3D modeling, crash test simulations and new car design across approximately 15,000 Linux and Windows servers. For three decades, this environment was managed by a custom application known as scVenus. As the system approached end-of-support, BMW required an enterprise-ready, scalable solution that could integrate with cloud environments, maintain stringent security parameters and support infrastructure-as-code deployments without disrupting ongoing vehicle development.

Solving complex automation challenges at enterprise scale

Following successful initial testing, BMW Group selected Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Working closely with Red Hat Technical Account Management and partners including IBM and Puzzle ITC AG, BMW successfully migrated all associated applications, servers and clients within a strict timeframe and budget.

The transition to Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has delivered measurable results for the automaker, including:

• Accelerated operational efficiency: With optimized Ansible Playbooks, complex infrastructure tasks that previously required up to 60 hours of processing time on thousands of nodes have been reduced to just 20 minutes. Other routine management processes were cut by 75%, from 12 hours to 3 hours.
• Shift left self-service capabilities: Custom integrations enabled the creation of a unified self-service portal. This empowers users to manage their own software license restarts and support requests, drastically reducing incident response times and freeing up critical IT resources.
• Resilient infrastructure: Enables redundancy and automated disaster recovery across thousands of endpoints and multiple availability zones, utilizing an Infrastructure as Code approach to meet strict enterprise compliance standards.

Future-proofing with AI and event-driven automation

To further address modern infrastructure demands and mitigate security complexities, BMW Group is exploring broader deployments of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform beyond the HPC environment. The team plans to introduce event-driven automation to automatically resolve routine IT service issues and is preparing for a transition toward a more cloud-native, containerized architecture. BMW Group also plans to use AI coding assistants alongside Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform's automated policy as code, enabling faster development while maintaining strict compliance.

Supporting Quotes

Gregor von Jagow, country manager Germany, Red Hat

"BMW Group's successful migration demonstrates the power of enterprise open source to tackle extreme IT complexity. By standardizing on Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, BMW has not only mitigated the risks of an aging legacy system but has also unlocked speed, scale and self-service capabilities critical to modern automotive innovation."

Martina Pretzl, Project Leader, HPC, BMW Group

"Replacing a 30-year-old legacy system across 15,000 servers while maintaining continuous vehicle production is a monumental challenge. By collaborating closely with Red Hat and our partners, we operated as a single, unified team to deliver this highly complex migration on time and within budget, establishing a modern, agile automation foundation."

Johan Barnard, Team Lead, Ansible Core, BMW Group

"Red Hat Ansible Automation will be with us for the foreseeable future. AI can't be trusted directly to run your production systems - you need automation as that trust layer."