Capital One on AWS

Capital One has been a disrupter in the financial services industry since 1994, using technology to transform banking and payments. Today, the “digital bank” is all in on AWS, embracing data analytics, microservices, AI/ML, and other solutions to continue to innovate. 

CUSTOMER STORIES

Capital One Completes Migration from Data Centers to AWS, Becomes First US Bank to Announce Going All In on the Cloud

2020

Capital One exited eight on-premises data centers by migrating to AWS, transforming the customer experience in the process. Founded in 1994, the “digital bank” uses technology to help its customers succeed. Capital One scaled its technology team to 11,000 members, adding software engineers and developers to build innovative customer experiences using AWS services such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), and AWS Lambda. 

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Capital One’s Tech Transformation Enables Improved Agility and Innovation

We have successfully exited all of our data centers and gone all in on AWS, enabling instant provisioning of architecture and rapid innovation. We are now able to manage data at a much larger scale and unlock the power of machine learning to deliver enhanced customer experiences. On AWS, our technology teams are freed to focus on what they do best: building great software and delivering innovation to our customers."

Rob Alexander
Chief Information Officer, Capital One


Capital One Brings Sustainability to Its Cloud Migration

2021

When Capital One decided to move to the cloud, it established a plan for responsibly disposing of its data center equipment. As it migrated, the company recycled 41 tons of copper and 62 tons of steel and removed a total of 13.5 million feet of cable from its last three data centers. Capital One expects to save 10 megawatts of power, the equivalent of 650,000 LED light bulbs, per year by exiting its data centers. “From the beginning, Capital One was committed to moving to the cloud in the most responsible and well-managed way possible,” says Joe Muratore, vice president of technology at Capital One. “It’s been incredibly rewarding to contribute to environmental sustainability by recycling decommissioned assets and reducing our carbon footprint by powering down the data centers.”

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Capital One Reimagines Banking Using AWS

How Capital One Reduced its Data-Center Footprint, Expanded its Use of Microservices, and Reimagined Banking Using AWS

2018

To best understand Capital One and its long-term strategy, it helps to think of the company not as a bank—despite the fact that the diversified financial services company is, in fact, one of the ten largest US banks by assets and deposits—but as a digital technology company that offers banking services. At Capital One, the central motivating belief is that the winners in next-generation banking will be the companies that make the most creative and innovative use of technology to provide seamless, intelligent, truly excellent customer experiences.

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Support for Learning AWS and Other New Technologies Helps Capital One Attract Top Talent

2018

One of the ways Capital One achieved companywide buy-in for its cloud-first policy—under which all new applications are architected for and deployed in the cloud—was by implementing a robust cloud-computing training program. That program was successful partly because of the wide net that it cast, offering carefully designed and tailored training not only to the engineers who would work directly on AWS but also to the business executives and other non-technical stakeholders who needed to be able to understand and advocate for cloud computing's transformational potential.

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Capital One Contact Centers Innovate Faster Using Amazon Connect

2018

Capital One trained contact-center associates in 30 minutes and achieved 100 percent adoption in 5 months using Amazon Connect. With the flexibility of Amazon Connect, Capital One can add new features in weeks instead of the 3–6 months required by its previous solution.

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Capital One Enhances Fraud Protection with AWS Machine Learning

2020

Capital One is one of the largest banks in the US and the largest digital bank. As consumers continue to forgo the brick-and-mortar for the digital-first, Capital One has embraced new technologies, adopting and applying AWS-backed AI and ML solutions to nearly every facet of the business and infusing the customer experience with intelligence. And because AWS is just as secure—and oftentimes more secure—than an on-premises data center, Capital One is able to apply these innovations while upholding its responsibility to protect customers and their data.

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On-Demand Infrastructure on AWS Helps Capital One DevOps Teams Move Faster Than Ever

2018

Capital One is well known for its early adoption of new technologies to help it transform the banking customer experience. Less obvious, but no less crucial, are the practices and mindsets that position Capital One to make such effective use of those new technologies—practices and mindsets that are the result of the company's conscious self-transformation into a digital technology company. The company’s recent embrace of DevOps is just the latest step.

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We are truly all in on the cloud, and AWS has been instrumental in enabling us to take full advantage of the benefits of being in the cloud. Going all in on the cloud has enabled both instant provisioning of infrastructure and rapid innovation. We are able to manage data at a much larger scale and unlock the power of machine learning to deliver enhanced customer  experiences."

Chris Nims
Senior Vice President of Cloud and Productivity Engineering, Capital One


ARCHITECTURE

AWS Policy Enforcement at Scale with Cloud Custodian

On this episode of This is My Architecture, Kapil Thangavelu, director of engineering at Capital One, explains the company's open-sourced rules engine for fleet management: Cloud Custodian. Learn how Capital One uses this tool and a simple YAML-based DSL to eliminate the need to manage hundreds or thousands of scripts and policies and offer "real-time" compliance and cost management at scale.

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How Capital One Uses Amazon S3 Glacier to Optimize Data Storage Costs and Maximize Resources

2021

In this blog, Sri Chadalavada, senior distinguished engineer at Capital One, discusses how long-term, secure, and durable Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) data archiving storage classes have helped Capital One meet data retention requirements and optimize costs. Learn why Amazon S3 Glacier and Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive suit Capital One’s needs and discover insights on making informed resource-management decisions that balance data storage spend and performance. 

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Find out how AWS is helping transform financial services.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

AWS CASE STUDY

2018
AWS Technology Enables Capital One's Move to Machine Learning
Using AWS, Capital One turns data into insights through machine learning, allowing the company to quickly innovate on behalf of its customers. Capital One is one of the largest banks in the United States and offers credit cards, checking and savings accounts, auto loans, rewards, and online banking services for consumers and businesses. Capital One uses AWS services including Amazon S3 to power its machine-learning innovation.
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RE:INVENT 2017

2017
AWS re:Invent 2017: Optimizing Serverless Application Data Tiers
As a fully managed database service, Amazon DynamoDB is a natural fit for serverless architectures. In this session, dive deep into why and how to use DynamoDB in serverless applications, followed by a real-world use case from Capital One leveraging mainframe data.
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AWS COMPUTE BLOG

2016
How Capital One Runs Containerized Microservices with Amazon ECS and Application Load Balancer
Capital One is rapidly embracing cloud-native microservices architectures and applying them to both existing and new workloads. To advance microservices adoption, increase efficiencies of cloud resources, and decouple application layer from the underlying infrastructure, the company is starting to use Docker to containerize the workloads and Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) to manage them.
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RE:INVENT 2016

2016
AWS re:Invent 2016: Migrating Enterprise Messaging to the Cloud
In this session for enterprise architects and developers, discover how to improve scalability, availability, and operational efficiency by migrating on-premises messaging middleware to a managed cloud service using Amazon SQS. Learn how Capital One is using Amazon SQS to migrate several core banking applications to the cloud to ensure high availability and cost efficiency and hear about exciting new Amazon SQS features that support even more workloads taking advantage of the cloud.
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FROM OUTSIDE AWS

FORBES

How Capital One Became A Leading Digital Bank
Rob Alexander has been the CIO of Capital one for roughly half of his 18 years with the company. Alexander took a non-traditional path to the role: he studied physics as an undergraduate at Harvard, spent time in the Air Force, received an MBA from Harvard Business School, and spent roughly 5.5 years as a consultant with Bain & Company. He joined Capital One in 1998 and assumed responsibility for a number of Capital One's lending businesses, including the US consumer credit card and installment loan businesses.
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CAPITAL ONE

Design Your Cloud Center of Excellence for Constant Evolution — Transition Matters
For most other enterprises, supersonic speed is the most elusive superpower for a heroic cloud journey — and the most necessary to harness. Speed at scale has long been the operating mode of Capital One’s lean enterprise. Accelerated by an agile mindset and DevOps culture, Capital One’s rapid rate of adoption drove a cloud journey that transformed the company into what is now essentially a large fintech startup.
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Medium

Capital One’s Cloud Journey Through the Stages of Adoption
Capital One started its cloud journey in 2013 in what it called an "Experimentation Phase," leveraging AWS in its innovation labs to test the technology and operating model. The company has since moved through all the stages of cloud adoption: building its cloud foundation, migrating applications and closing data centers, and finally working to optimize its AWS footprint.
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Medium

A 12 Step Program to Get from Zero to Hundreds of AWS-Certified Engineers
As it began its cloud migration, Capital One realized that its engineers would need a new set of skills to work in the cloud. Instead of looking to hire external talent, the company prioritized AWS Training and Certification for existing engineers, helping overcome skill gaps more rapidly.
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