AxFina finds speed and regulation with Azure migration

When central and eastern Europe focused asset and loan servicer AxFina Holding SA acquired Hungarian leasing company Lombard Lízing Zrt., it had just a few weeks to replace Lombard’s infrastructure, which had reached the end of its life cycle. With AxFina’s desire to innovate and scale and regulatory requirements looming, it turned to Hungarian IT company DIGITAL Kft. to help AxFina migrate the entirety of its IT applications to the cloud. Microsoft Azure became the ideal solution to help ensure that AxFina maintained security, regulatory compliance, and speed.

A team effort for migration

For systems integration, DIGITAL Kft. partnered with Kvazar.cloud, one of the largest Microsoft cloud hosting indirect partners in Hungary, which manages more than 40,000 Cloud Solution Provider program licenses.

AxFina had long hosted its own IT infrastructure in Hungary with in-house datacenters. However, this legacy system was approaching end of support, and AxFina needed to find an alternative solution that would not only enable the company to significantly reduce costs but, even more importantly, support AxFina’s growth across jurisdictions and product innovation.

“Since the infrastructure change came at the very end of its life cycle, to replace it, we would have had a spend of about €1.5 million just in Hungary. We have completely averted this spend by migrating to Microsoft Azure,” says AxFina CTO Johannes Wolfslehner. “Next year, we will release at least 60 to 70 percent of the recurring infrastructure-related costs enabled by the Azure pay-as-you-go subscription model.”

“Next year, we will release at least 60 to 70 percent of the recurring infrastructure-related costs.”

Johannes Wolfslehner, CTO, AxFina

The trust between DIGITAL Kft. and Kvazar.cloud and cooperation with Microsoft Hungary were pivotal in helping AxFina meet its needs. DIGITAL Kft. helped safeguard AxFina’s budget, while Kvazar.cloud was able to formulate the Microsoft request without the need for a strategy and planning workshop, as it already contained all the necessary information to build the business use case.

“I’ve never seen such a well-specified request,” says Microsoft Cloud Solutions Architect Lorand Farkas. “It was really easy to lean on it.”

Azure as the solution

AxFina had also been considering a local cloud solution provider but chose Azure for its many benefits, including cost reduction, scalability, and compliance with regulatory requirements and security standards. Azure is also able to offer the reach and scale to support expansion thanks to its worldwide operations.

DIGITAL Kft. and Kvazar.cloud approached local Microsoft cloud architects to assist in a tight-timeline, lift-and-shift migration to Azure. The two partners worked closely to successfully migrate AxFina Hungary’s entire on-premises environment to Azure by following the best practices described in the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure. And the experienced engineering team at DIGITAL Kft. worked tirelessly to meet the strict deadline for the migration.

“The main factor was customer satisfaction,” says Farkas. “They got all the help required to make sure that this is a super optimized environment, and they feel confident using Azure as they scale to other countries.”

The gold standard in security and regulations

Because The Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB), the central bank of Hungary, had recently changed its compliance and regulatory requirements, local companies were very anxious about these changes and the subsequent audits.

“We are a financial institution in Hungary that moved its full IT infrastructure into the public cloud and were able to cover the MNB’s regulations and recommendations at the same time. This may serve as a role model for the Hungarian regulator and set an example for other financial institutions. This flexible infrastructure is the foundation of our growth,” says Attila Kovács, Head of IT and Transformation at AxFina.

As AxFina was also looking to expand into other countries, compliance was key.

“Compliance is difficult when you add more countries to a solution because every country has slightly different compliance requirements for financial companies,” says József Fenyvesi, DIGITAL Kft. CEO. “Orchestrating geographically distributed financial companies across Europe and providing the same, highly trusted computing environment—that is Microsoft Azure.”

“Orchestrating geographically distributed financial companies across Europe and providing the same, highly trusted computing environment—that is Microsoft Azure.”

József Fenyvesi, CEO, DIGITAL Kft

In addition to lifting and shifting all assets to Azure, DIGITAL Kft. also implemented Azure Virtual Desktop for 50 users and performed an Exchange 2010 to Exchange Online migration. An enterprise-scale landing zone was also deployed, with governance and security configured using Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Azure Policy. Finally, Kvazar.cloud implemented Azure Lighthouse for highly secure customer management and to streamline future multitenant management efforts.

Ultimately, the transition to Azure gave AxFina flexibility in infrastructure and pricing, easily scalable infrastructure, and support for compliance with EU financial regulations. The team continues to provide ongoing support and cooperation with Microsoft and Azure experts, sharing best practices to maintain customer satisfaction.

“Not only have we managed to migrate the necessary infrastructure, we were able to pilot cloud transformation in Hungary within a regulated entity, all while molding it into an innovative player in the market,” says Wolfslehner.

Find out more about the partners on their websites—DIGITAL Kft. and Kvazar.cloud—and more about the company at AxFina.