Bank on Open Source for DevOps success

Imagine a large enterprise with waterfall, manual processes and outsourced technologies. Got it? Good. Now, picture that large enterprise becoming a cutting edge tech org based on Open Source and DevOps technologies. That transformation took a little bit more effort to picture, didn't it? But that's exactly what Capital One has done over the last seven years as part of our ongoing digital transformation.

Widely recognized as a major credit card company, with over 70 million accounts Capital One is also one of the largest banks in the US. Recently we celebrated the 25th anniversary of our going public, making us one of the “youngest” major US banks as well. Compared to our competitors - some of whom are over a hundred years old - we’re like a startup. And like a startup, we’ve always prided ourselves on being disruptive. DevOps and Open Source have contributed to our successes here, despite the regulated industry in which we operate.

This DevOps and Open Source journey represents a collaboration between many different teams and orgs at Capital One, including those from Engineering, Cyber, and Legal, as well as our Open Source Office. It’s been their job to not only answer “why” we should be leveraging these technologies, but “how” to do so safely and within established risk tolerances.

Of course, this didn’t happen in a day or even a year. And of course there were pain points along the way. In this video from DOES18 Las Vegas, Capital One’s own Topo Pal and Jamie Specter talk about our paired DevOps and Open Source Journeys. Topo with a focus on the details of the journey and the decisions we made, Jamie with a focus on managing the legal challenges and risks encountered along the way.