How BITMARCK is Modernizing Workload Automation with ANOW! Automate

Like many large enterprises, BITMARCK began reassessing its workload automation strategy in 2024. The immediate catalyst was a significant increase in licensing costs for its legacy workload automation platform. However, reducing costs alone was not the primary objective.

Instead, BITMARCK viewed the situation as an opportunity to evaluate whether its existing platform still represented the best long-term strategic choice.

The organization launched a public tender with several clear objectives:

• Reduce total operating costs for on-premises workload automation

• Preserve the extensive functionality required to support thousands of production processes

• Minimize migration risk through automated migration capabilities

• Invest in a modern automation platform capable of supporting future hybrid and cloud environments

• Ensure a highly available, microservices-based architecture with extensive integration capabilities

For BITMARCK, the decision, they hoped, would shape the future of its enterprise automation landscape for years to come.

Following a comprehensive evaluation, Beta Systems was selected as BITMARCK's new workload automation partner. The decision reflected both technical excellence and commercial value.

According to BITMARCK, Beta Systems achieved the highest score in the solution evaluation and delivered the most economically advantageous proposal. Beyond the technology itself, ANOW! Automate aligned closely with BITMARCK's long-term strategy.

Its modern microservices architecture offers high availability while allowing deployment on-premises today and enabling future migration to cloud environments without requiring another platform replacement.

Equally important was ANOW!'s broad ecosystem of integrations across enterprise applications, SAP environments, Managed File Transfer solutions, IT Service Management platforms, and cloud services, ensuring the flexibility required for future modernization initiatives.

The original project plan envisioned a classic "Big Bang" migration. Approximately 14,000 production jobs would be migrated in a single cutover within one year. Following detailed workshops between BITMARCK and Beta Systems, both teams concluded that this approach introduced unnecessary operational risk.

Rather than forcing a single large migration event, the project team jointly redesigned the implementation strategy. The new approach divided the migration into six to seven carefully planned waves, each progressing through the same lifecycle:

Analysis → Migration → Testing → Go-Live

Each successful migration wave validates the approach for the next one while allowing operational teams to gain experience with the new platform before additional workloads are transferred.

Most importantly, the revised strategy significantly reduced risk to BITMARCK's continuously operating production environment without extending the overall project timeline and became one of the defining success factors of the project.

The next phase focuses on migrating workloads, wave by wave, while engaging the respective business departments as each production area transitions to the new platform.

This measured approach allows BITMARCK to balance modernization with operational continuity, a critical requirement for an organization delivering essential healthcare IT services across Germany.

BITMARCK continues to standardize and modernize its IT landscape.

While the workload automation platform will initially remain on-premises, the organization's broader strategy increasingly embraces cloud-native technologies and standardized enterprise platforms.

With ANOW! Automate, BITMARCK has selected a workload automation platform capable of supporting both their current operational requirements and planning for future modernization initiatives.

Replacing a workload automation platform is often an opportunity to rethink operational processes, reduce long-term risk, and establish a stronger foundation for future growth.

For BITMARCK, migrating from their legacy system to ANOW! Automate was more about finding the right partner than just reducing licensing costs. By combining a modern automation platform with a carefully planned migration strategy and close collaboration between customer and vendor, the organization has laid the groundwork for a more flexible, resilient, and future-ready automation environment.

This project demonstrates that successful workload automation modernization is achieved not through technology alone, but through partnership, transparency, and a shared commitment to long-term success.

BITMARCK is Germany's leading digitalization partner for statutory health insurance. Headquartered in Essen, the company develops and operates mission-critical IT solutions that enable approximately 80% of Germany's statutory health insurance providers to serve more than 35 million insured citizens.

Within BITMARCK, the Data Logistics organization is responsible for ensuring the reliable execution of thousands of business-critical processes. Every day, the team manages approximately 19,000 workload definitions and executes nearly 59,000 jobs across 1,500 systems (Windows, Linux, AIX, Solaris, etc.). These workloads support everything from secure data exchange and SAP processing to data warehouse operations, database maintenance, and healthcare production systems.

As these operations continue to evolve, workload automation has become the foundation for ensuring operational efficiency, security, and future scalability.