ASN Bank is in the middle of an organization‑wide transformation that extends well beyond IT. The former Volksbank now operates as a single brand, bringing together the consumer brands ASN Bank, RegioBank, SNS, and BLG Wonen under the ASN Bank name. This move marks the beginning of a new chapter, with simplicity, clarity, and decisiveness at its core.
“One brand forces us to make clear, deliberate choices,” says Sebastiaan Kalshoven, CTO of ASN Bank. “And those choices start with IT. Less complexity translates into greater speed, sharper focus, and ultimately more value for our customers.”
That acceleration begins with simplification. Processes and systems are being systematically streamlined, standardized, and future‑proofed. Uniformity is not an abstract ideal, but a practical means of accelerating innovation while reducing risk.
Greater Speed and Agility
Simplifying and standardizing the IT landscape reduces complexity, enabling faster delivery, quicker innovation, and improved responsiveness to customer and market needs.
Improved Stability and Reliability
A unified, fully virtualized infrastructure ensures high availability and predictable performance for millions of customers, with stability and agility reinforcing each other.
Higher Team Autonomy and Productivity
Engineers and DevOps teams gain more control and ownership, allowing them to make changes independently and turning IT from a bottleneck into an accelerator.
Scalable and Future‑Proof Architecture
Moving toward a fully virtualized, standardized environment creates a platform that can scale with the bank’s growth and evolving ambitions.
Hybrid Cloud as a Strategic End State
Optimal balance between data control, compliance, and flexibility through the combination of private cloud and public cloud.
Less complexity translates into greater speed, sharper focus, and ultimately more value for our customers.
A Single IT Backbone for Millions of Customers
With approximately 300 IT infrastructure professionals, ASN Bank supports around 3.5 million customers every day. Reliable IT is therefore not a supporting function, but a core prerequisite for the bank’s operations.
“IT has to be available at all times,” Kalshoven explains. “But availability alone isn’t enough. Teams also need to be able to deliver quickly. Stability and agility should reinforce one another, not stand in each other’s way.”
“Over time, the IT landscape became increasingly fragmented, shaped by historical decisions, brand differences, and a wide range of vendors and technologies. This fragmentation leads to higher management overhead and greater dependency. By simplifying the landscape, ASN Bank increases team autonomy and structurally reduces operational pressure,” Kalshoven continues.
From Legacy Complexity to a Fully Virtualized Direction
ASN Bank previously ran workloads in a VMware environment, complemented by legacy solutions such as bare‑metal installations where applications run directly on hardware.
“The previous setup limited scalability and resulted in complex, labor‑intensive management. We’re deliberately choosing a single, clear direction,” says Kalshoven. “Ultimately, everything will be virtualized. Only then can we create an environment that remains manageable and can grow alongside the bank.”
The acquisition of VMware by Broadcom, completed in November 2023, was not the original trigger for this decision, but served as a strategic accelerator. Subsequent changes to the VMware portfolio, along with structural shifts in licensing and pricing models, reinforced for ASN Bank the importance of governance, predictability, and long‑term decision‑making in the infrastructure domain.
“We don’t want to be dependent on market swings or vendor strategies,” Kalshoven notes. “Our infrastructure choices should follow our strategy—not the other way around. That requires transparency, predictability, and a platform that evolves with our ambitions.”
The Chosen Path: Hybrid and Standardized
Migrating an entire bank to a new platform is an intensive and carefully orchestrated process. The first step involved consolidating technologies from the different brands. The next phase focused on simplification, with clear choices around architecture, standards, and workload placement.
The resulting IT landscape is intentionally hybrid. ASN Bank built a private cloud based on the Nutanix Cloud Platform and complements it with public cloud providers.
“For us, hybrid is not a transitional phase, but a strategic end state,” Kalshoven explains. “It allows us to retain control over our data, meet regulatory requirements, and remain flexible in where and how we deploy capacity.”
On‑premises data centers remain a core part of the IT landscape. Using a decision tree, ASN Bank determines the optimal placement for each application. Even in a changing geopolitical context, the bank sees its architectural choices reaffirmed.
From Bottleneck to Accelerator
The majority of the roughly 6,000 virtual machines has now been migrated. Because the organization already had experience with Nutanix, internal support has been strong from the outset. Engineers and DevOps teams report increased control and a stronger sense of ownership.
“Teams can now make changes themselves,” says Kalshoven. “IT has shifted from a bottleneck to an accelerator — shortening delivery times, speeding up innovation, and boosting job satisfaction. Teams are less dependent and can respond faster to market and customer needs.”
Partnership that Turns Strategy into Action
“Our collaboration with Nutanix has been a key factor within the success of this transition. Technical challenges are addressed quickly, and even for exceptional cases we find workable solutions that remain within our agreed standards. We’re not looking for a vendor that simply delivers technology—we’re looking for a partner who thinks alongside us, understands where we come from, and helps turn our strategic choices into reality,” Kalshoven emphasizes.
Modernizing with Purpose and Perspective.
“We are well on track,” says Sebastiaan Kalshoven. “We have deliberately chosen an ‘all‑in’ approach, gradually modernizing our hybrid multicloud strategy with new technology. The main challenge continues to be bringing the entire organization along, but within the planned timelines we can see this approach starting to deliver results.
Simplifying the IT landscape helps us source more selectively, reduce dependencies, and create room for further innovation. At the same time, we are gradually phasing out legacy hardware, which contributes to a more stable and predictable IT environment.
This is not just a technological decision,” Kalshoven concludes. “It is a conscious step toward greater stability and focus, with long‑term sustainability in mind. Through continued virtualization and ongoing optimization, we also expect to make a positive contribution to our sustainability ambitions, in line with our goal of becoming a climate‑neutral bank by 2030.”
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