Hamburg Commercial Bank finds cost savings, efficiencies, and improved sustainability with Windows 365

Building on past success

Hamburg Commercial Bank, a leader in corporate lending across Western Europe, adopted a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution before the COVID-19 pandemic made hybrid work necessary for most companies. VDI gave the bank’s developers more flexibility and computing power and reduced the need to provide new devices for its contractors. Hamburg Commercial Bank then migrated to Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop for greater performance and reliability, in addition to better interoperability with other Microsoft technologies the bank had already invested in.

Building on that success, the Germany-based multinational sought a solution that was robust and flexible enough for the bank’s most intensive users—its trading department and development teams, who needed more capabilities beyond what typical employees require.

Enter Windows 365. Windows 365 Cloud PCs deliver a personalized Windows desktop experience from the Microsoft Cloud that’s accessible on any device—even smartphones and tablets. Hamburg Commercial Bank’s existing Surface laptops can run a Cloud PC with more memory and a faster CPU that’s fully accessible on a familiar lightweight device with a touchscreen optimized for remote connectivity.

“The trading and risk control departments run very intensive compute tasks,” reports Thorsten Lüdtke, Head of IT Infrastructure at Hamburg Commercial Bank. “We checked out the new product from Microsoft—Windows 365—and our experience was really great. Users can personalize everything and have guaranteed dedicated computing power. So that was a perfect match for our needs.”

Trading virtual spaces

With traditional virtualization products, signing off is like turning off a PC for which you only have guest access. When you come back later, you need to open everything back up and redo any personalization. Windows 365 remembers the state from your last session—so you can pick up precisely where you left off.

This was a huge advantage for traders, who can jump right into their workday without needing to find the previous day’s stopping point or reopen apps or documents. And employees report that after connecting, it feels the same as working on a local device.

“Another benefit is less administration,” notes Lüdtke. “Microsoft does the management, so we’re only responsible for packaging up everything to roll out on our Cloud PCs and defining different use cases and user groups. There’s no effort on our side for the infrastructure itself.”

Adds Lüdtke, “Packaging and deploying images for Windows 365 Cloud PCs is like other remote solutions, but you get a lot more PC power—on pretty much any device—in a highly secure environment. And we save about 20 percent in IT administration effort.”

And with Windows 365, there’s no need for IT to devote effort to turning off the solution for nights, weekends, or holidays, because there’s no charge for additional uptime or usage—or energy costs for the Cloud PCs. “Users have their personalized Windows experience around-the-clock, seven days a week, they have their dedicated bandwidth, and they’re not in a shared environment,” says Lüdtke.

Banking on Cloud PC

With the success of Windows 365 Cloud PCs with Hamburg Commercial Bank’s power users in the trading and development departments, next steps are to roll the solution out more widely to more than 1,000 internal employees and external staff who support them. The bank will continue using Azure Virtual Desktop alongside Windows 365 Cloud PCs for some use cases, including specific administrative tasks.

One specific benefit from deploying Windows 365 to more users: rather than issue computers to external workers, they can use the hardware provided by their own organizations to connect to Cloud PCs, with Hamburg Commercial Bank’s IT department using Microsoft Intune for highly secure connectivity, authentication, and remote device management.

“The plan for the future is to go more and more into Windows 365,” adds Lüdtke. “It’s of utmost importance for us at Hamburg Commercial Bank to pay greater attention to sustainability in everything we do. We expect that using Windows 365 will help us reduce our hardware needs and electricity consumption.”

In addition to the reduced, predictable costs of Windows 365, Hamburg Commercial Bank anticipates that the ability to support existing and bring-your-own-PC hardware and less onsite infrastructure will deliver sustainability benefits, alongside corporate efforts to reduce paper consumption and embrace digital processes. And it supports Hamburg Commercial Bank’s goal to be a market leader.

“We aspire to be among the top banks in Europe, supporting real estate, construction, shipping, asset management, renewable energies, and infrastructure, in addition to general corporate lending,” says Claudia Lemlihi, Director of Marketing Communications at Hamburg Commercial Bank. “Our vision is to provide a modern workplace to our employees and improve services to customers.”

Find out more about Hamburg Commercial Bank on LinkedIn.