Context
This initiative represents a response to challenges and an effort to bridge the fragmented silos of data and alleviate the mounting burdens of cost. In pursuit of the European Data Strategy, a sovereign private cloud has pioneered – moving beyond exorbitant IT infrastructure and legacy systems towards a flexible open-source architecture and containerisation.
Designed entirely by the ingenuity of in-house engineers, this endeavour means a radical transformation in efficiency. Annual licensing costs have plummeted from PLN 3 million to 1.15 million; even considering the investment in human capital, net savings exceed fifty per cent.
The success is measured not merely in money, but in speed – condensing deployment from years into months. The Polish Financial Supervision Authority (Urząd Komisji Nadzoru Finansowego – UKNF) now runs a resilient ‘ecosystem’ that shatters the chains of vendor lock-in, ensures the highest level of cyber resilience, and stands as the bedrock of data-driven oversight over the Polish financial market.
Objectives
This endeavour stands as a direct response to the strategic challenges identified by the European Data Strategy. The persistent isolation of public information was addressed – data silos – where fragmented databases and inefficient extract, transform, and load (ETL) processes stifle the capacity for insight. By develop a sovereign, containerised private cloud on-premise, the aim is to transcend these legacy barriers through the consolidation of the information assets.
Project objectives are:
- data consolidation and architectural integration to implement a unified data architecture that integrates sectoral databases (banking, insurance, and capital markets) into a centralised repository, eliminating cross-segment information silos;
- on-premise private cloud sovereignty to deploy a secure, on-premise private cloud environment in the UKNF, ensuring full institutional control over the underlying infrastructure and sensitive data residency;
- big data analytics to utilise advanced analytical engines for correlation of multi-segment market data, enhancing the detection of systemic risks and fraudulent activities through high-velocity processing;
- operational cost optimisation to reduce total costs of ownership by leveraging containerisation for dynamic scalability and migrating from high-cost commercial licences to enterprise-grade open-source stacks;
- ETL automation and resource reallocation to automate ETL workflows, significantly reducing manual data processing overhead and enabling personnel to focus on high-value supervisory analysis.
Implementation
The project was delivered as a 100% in-house initiative, intentionally bypassing external consultancies to secure full technological sovereignty. Governance was based on an agile framework with a core team of 7 dedicated specialists, which dynamically scaled to 20 personnel during peak migration phases. This internal model ensured that all architectural intellectual property remained within the Authority.
Budgetary efficiency was a cornerstone of the implementation, achieving a 50% reduction in maintenance costs by replacing proprietary solutions with an enterprise open-source stack. Cost-effectiveness was further enhanced by a remote-first work model and the integration of AI-assisted development, which significantly accelerated code generation and data mapping.
Stakeholder engagement and transparency were maintained via Confluence, serving as the central collaboration hub. The consultation process involved two key streams: substantive business units to ensure analytical alignment, and software vendors to synchronise with technical road maps. This rigorous approach enabled the successful delivery of the platform and the migration of four key systems within a disciplined 11-month timeframe, meeting the critical deadline for legacy decommissioning.