Laying strong foundations for innovative banking

As the banking industry modernizes, customers increasingly expect sleek and swift digital services to form the heart of their banking experience. In addition, with the rise of Open banking practices, there’s an imperative—and an opportunity—for banks to cooperate with third-party providers to bring new offerings to customers.

Société Générale Maroc (Société Générale) had built a set of monolithic applications around its core banking application. These aging auxiliary systems had proved reliable over the years, but the bank was beginning to suffer from poor performance as demand grew, impacting customer experience. The messaging infrastructure and enterprise service bus (ESB) underpinning the auxiliary systems made adding new digital services and sharing data with external partners complicated. In addition, the bank lacked the observability tools to effectively diagnose performance issues.

To align with best practices and attract new customers through high-quality digital customer service, Société Générale decided to modernize its IT architecture through a microservices-based, API-first approach. “Innovation has always been one of our core values, but we were being held back by our monolithic applications and legacy middleware,” says an Société Générale spokesperson. “We saw the opportunity to become more adaptable by transitioning to cloud-native microservices.”

To enable the significant transformation from monolithic to microservices architecture, Société Générale approached IBM Platinum Business Partner Power Maroc (PowerM) for support. “PowerM stood out to us because they had glowing customer references in the Moroccan banking industry,” says a Société Générale spokesperson. “With their deep expertise in IBM solutions, we believed that we could trust them to guide us through this challenging project.”

Working together with IBM Expert Labs, PowerM performed a thorough analysis of the bank’s applications. It became clear that before Société Générale could migrate to a microservices infrastructure, it needed to solve the core performance issues that were impacting production. It also needed to bolster security.

As a first step, PowerM updated the bank’s existing IBM® Guardium® and IBM MQ systems. Guardium helps to ensure security for sensitive customer data, which will be especially significant as Société Générale extends its relationships with external service providers. With high-availability messaging between applications provided by the latest version of IBM MQ, the bank will be able to help ensure reliable high performance even during business peak times. The bank is now deploying IBM Instana® software, which will give the IT team insight into the entire infrastructure, as well as automating issue resolution to help resolve core performance issues.

Building on this solid foundation of performance, security and observability, Société Générale is working with PowerM on modernization by deploying IBM Cloud Pak® for Integration and IBM Cloud Pak for Applications. The bank is also deploying PowerM’s own containerization platform built on the Red Hat® OpenShift® Platform—rKube—which will help it enhance services integration and stimulate innovation at scale.

With support from PowerM and IBM, Société Générale has reduced its technical debt and resolved performance issues. These improvements help ensure that customers have access to reliable digital services while the bank shifts to a microservices architecture in the background.

As the transformation continues, the bank looks forward to faster innovation and increased customer engagement. The integration facilitated by the IBM Cloud Pak solutions will help  Société Générale introduce new APIs to reduce friction in communication with third parties. This integration will help Société Générale with more dynamic development of new digital services.

Rebuilding existing functionality so  microservices can run in containers in the background, promises to make software development faster and more efficient. Rather than building each new application as an isolated entity, the bank can now assemble applications from shared microservices. This method, in turn, will make it easier to help ensure security and keep software up to date. Even as the bank adds new technologies, it expects to simplify IT management by using Instana® to improve observability and accelerate issue resolution.

“To support Société Générale on its modernization journey, we always look at solutions in the broader business context,” says Walid Largou, CTO at Power Maroc. “It’s not just about resolving individual technical issues, but rather taking a step back to look at the business opportunities we can unlock. We look forward to continuing our relationship with IBM to provide Société Générale with the right architecture for success.”

Through these ongoing modernization efforts, Société Générale’s customers will benefit from new and better ways of banking. With the future-proofed microservices architecture it’s deploying with PowerM and IBM, the bank can meet customer needs more efficiently. It will also be able to anticipate shifts in its industry and deploy innovative digital services at scale.

Adil El Kourri, CIO, COO TECH Société Générale Maroc, concludes: “To build a sustainable system, it is essential to strengthen the foundations of infrastructure and platforms, avoiding reliance on fragile structures. IBM Cloud Pak, with its resilience and modularity, serves as a cornerstone of this transformation, providing enhanced security, optimized performance and opportunities for innovation, particularly in artificial intelligence. This transformation, supported by partners like IBM, positions Société Générale Maroc as an innovative and forward-thinking bank, setting the stage for a strategy that combines technological robustness, operational excellence and innovation.”

Société Générale Maroc (link resides outside of ibm.com), or Société Générale Marocaine de Banques (Société Générale), is a Moroccan commercial bank headquartered in Casablanca. It’s a subsidiary of Société Générale France, with Saham Group as its majority shareholder following a buyout approved by Bank Al-Maghrib on 2 November 2024. Opening its first branch in 1913, Société Généralehas grown to 400 locations and 4,000 employees, providing a full set of retail banking services to nearly 800,000 customers. A key player in financing the local economy, Société Générale is committed to responsibility, innovation and teamwork.

PowerM (link resides outside of ibm.com) is an innovative technology solutions provider, specializing in cloud and Application modernization services, as well as comprehensive IT infrastructure offerings. As an IBM Platinum Business Partner, PowerM delivers a robust portfolio of services that empower organizations with cutting-edge strategies in cloud computing and application transformation. With a proven track record of excellence, PowerM has been honored as a five-time finalist for the prestigious IBM Beacon Awards (2018, 2019, 2021) and is the proud winner of the IBM TechXchange 2024 Award of Excellence in Hybrid Cloud. These accolades reflect PowerM’s commitment to delivering innovative, high-impact solutions that drive business success and digital transformation.