World Bank invests in greater efficiency and security with Microsoft Azure Arc

The World Bank’s IT and Information Security Office teams were using a duplicative decentralized solution for network monitoring and management. Recognizing an opportunity to improve efficiency and reduce costs, World Bank replaced their existing technology stack with a new solution based on Azure Arc.

Access to basic financial services is essential to building economies and lifting individuals out of devastating poverty. Yet, these life-changing offerings are not available in developing countries where they are needed most. The World Bank is working tirelessly to end extreme poverty and boost prosperity on a livable planet. To achieve its mission, the organization offers lending services in developing countries around the world.

The World Bank is among the world’s largest sources of funding and financial knowledge for 189 developing countries. It employs a diverse workforce representing more than 170 countries in more than 130 locations. The World Bank IT team was using multiple cloud providers and tools to manage the complex backend of the global institution.

“It was completely non-centralized. There were three, four different tools and places to go to monitor things. Even the security office was using different software to monitor security risks for all our servers,” recalls Chandra Kala Macha, Information Officer II, World Bank.

Multiple issues, one solution: Azure Arc

Both the IT and Information Security Office teams began forming a technology punch list to improve efficiency and reduce costs. At the top of the list: a cloud-based solution that would offer centralized monitoring, performance, resource consumption, and security management, all in a single package. This would enable them to deprecate duplicate licenses, reduce operating costs, and centralize data storage. That was particularly important, as the IT and Information Security Office have a constant need to share information.

The ideal solution would also enable World Bank employees to better manage their inventory of data workloads and perform maintenance tasks such as backups and patches more efficiently. The teams also sought a solution that would enable them to better assess the database environment using features such as cloud security assessment. Also on the list: a way to extract insights on migration readiness. The solution: Microsoft Azure Arc.

“We came across Azure Arc last year because initially our server team started this project. They wanted to work on the SQL Server infrastructure, and we knew that was a capability of Azure Arc,” Kala Macha recalls, adding that her team wanted to leverage it for SQL Server instances. With approvals from both management and the Information Security Office, the team selected a solution that included Microsoft Azure Arc, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Azure Monitor, and Microsoft Purview. 

Compatibility played a big role in the decision making process. World Bank wanted a solution that could be used to manage both Azure and AWS servers, but that would also work with its Microsoft SQL Server stack. Today, Azure Arc is the only native manageability solution available for Microsoft SQL Server, giving it an advantage over the competition. Most importantly, it could manage both World Bank clouds.

“We wanted to implement Azure Arc so we could utilize all the features and manage all our on-premises and cloud servers, including the AWS ones, from one location,” Kala Macha explains. “With Azure Arc, we can manage everything at the operating level and on the SQL Server side as well—all from a single pane of glass. It’s made a huge difference in our efficiency.”

Another point in its favor: the Information Security Office team was already using the technology. As a financial institution, World Bank deals with extremely sensitive data—which presents an attractive target for attackers. Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides comprehensive hybrid and multicloud security required to help protect the organization’s compute resources and data workloads. The team uses Azure Monitor to gauge performance trends and identify potential anomalies. The solution has proven extremely beneficial across the company, Kala Macha says. 

The World Bank team utilized Azure Arc to streamline its cloud migration journey, leveraging the tool to meticulously assess the on-premises environment and gain a comprehensive understanding of dependencies, resource utilization, and migration scale. That analysis facilitated the imposition of governance and compliance requirements seamlessly across all environments.

“By employing best practices assessment reports, we delved into both on-premises and multi-cloud resources, pinpointing configuration issues, security vulnerabilities, and operational best practice violations,” Kala Macha says. “These reports served as invaluable guides, offering clarity on potential problems and improvement areas prior to migration. The reports spotlighted security gaps and non-compliance issues, enabling us to resolve these challenges preemptively or during the migration process.”

The reports also provided key insights into performance optimization, identifying configuration settings that would benefit from refinement, Kala Macha adds. “Addressing these findings ensured our on-premises resources were meticulously prepared for migration to Azure, guaranteeing a smoother and highly successful migration experience.”

Greater efficiency, greater insights, greater good

As of 2023, World Bank had connected about 25 percent of its SQL Server estate to Azure Arc. They plan to triple the instance count in 2024 based on initial results. Today, performance, insights, security, and compliance all can be managed in a single, centralized tool. All monitoring can be done in one location, making it simpler for teams to manage issues and requirements around vulnerabilities. 

There have also been some unexpected efficiencies, Kala Macha notes. “For example, before Azure Arc, utilizing the on-premises SQL infrastructure required multiple teams to be aligned and coordinated, she says. “It took a lot of time, communication, and security clearances. Azure Arc has alleviated that bottleneck.”

Moving to Azure Arc has also had some notable financial benefits. For example, the IT team was using decentralized tools that were not capable of monitoring the entire SQL infrastructure (both on-premises and cloud). Plus, the team was only able to use the licensed tools on a few on-premises servers. For the same cost, World Bank can now enable Azure Arc on more than 300 SQL servers—10 times more than the previously licensed tools—to monitor performance, security compliance, and more. (A cost savings of 90 percent.)

The World Bank teams have also adapted Azure Arc and Microsoft Defender for Cloud throughout the company—not just in IT. “All our teams are using Azure Arc. It’s the common language for us now,” Kala Macha says. And that’s just the beginning. Today, World Bank and Microsoft are working together on additional functional elements to improve optimization of the Azure Arc platform. “We’ve already seen how Azure Arc can make us more efficient and reduce our operating costs. Now, we want to see how we can do more and save more,” Kala Macha says. “Because every dollar saved on the operation side is one more dollar that can go towards eradicating poverty.”

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