IT Automation at BMW: From 60 Hours to 20 Minutes

IT/OT Convergence in Practice IT Automation at BMW: From 60 Hours to 20 Minutes

2026-10-27 Source: Red Hat | Translated by AI 2 min Reading Time

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To accelerate vehicle development, the BMW Group has modernized its entire high-performance computing (HPC) environment. In doing so, the automaker replaced a 30-year-old legacy system with a modern automation layer—resulting in enormous time savings.

The global automaker has reduced the time required for infrastructure configurations from 60 hours to 20 minutes—30,000 employees are benefiting from the resulting increase in operational efficiency(Source: Red Hat) — The global automaker has reduced the time required for infrastructure configurations from 60 hours to 20 minutes—30,000 employees are benefiting from the resulting increase in operational efficiency
(Source: Red Hat)

In the industrial sector, traditional automation technology and IT infrastructure are increasingly converging. A major project currently underway at the BMW Group demonstrates just how significant the efficiency gains from consistent IT automation can be: The automaker has migrated the management of its approximately 15,000 Linux and Windows servers to Red Hat’s Ansible Automation Platform.This HPC environment is the backbone of vehicle development and handles computationally intensive tasks such as 3D modeling and crash test simulations. Until now, it was managed by a custom-developed, 30-year-old system (“scVenus”), for which support has now expired.

Infrastructure-as-Code Delivers Massive Time Savings

The transition to the standardized platform, which treats infrastructure as code (Infrastructure-as-Code), yielded immediately measurable results in IT operations:

Drastically reduced computation times: Complex infrastructure tasks that previously took up to 60 hours to complete across thousands of nodes are now finished in 20 minutes thanks to optimized playbooks.
Less routine work: The effort required for recurring administrative processes decreased by 75 percent.
Self-Service: Through a central portal, the approximately 30,000 internal users can renew software licenses or submit support requests, which reduces the workload on the IT department.The premise was strict: The migration of the 15,000 servers was not to interfere with ongoing vehicle development at any time.

"AI Must Not Directly Manage Production Systems"

Looking ahead, BMW is now exploring the use of event-driven automation and AI coding assistants to automatically resolve recurring IT issues. Johan Barnard, Team Lead Ansible Core at the BMW Group, makes it clear that the automation layer plays the role of “gatekeeper” in this process: “AI cannot be directly entrusted with managing production systems—that requires a trustworthy automation layer.” This principle is likely to set the tone, especially for plant manufacturers and industrial automation (OT), in these times of AI hype.

AI cannot be directly entrusted with managing production systems—this requires a trustworthy automation layer.

Johan Barnard, Team Lead for Ansible Core at the BMW Group

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