Enabling secure access for BMW’s car leasing platform

In today’s business environment, secure access and efficient system integration are key priorities for global enterprises.

Problem?

After merging several European car leasing companies, BMW faced fragmented IT systems.

Approach?

The team used Keycloak, Quarkus, and Azure to centralize access and integrate markets.

Impact?

Better security, reduced operational costs, and streamlined processes across five European markets.

Augusto, a WAES consultant, has contributed to BMW's car leasing platform project, focusing on transforming how the company manages user authentication and authorization. This work aligns with BMW’s broader digital transformation strategy, centralizing processes and reducing costs.

Building a unified access system

BMW's car leasing company, Alphabet, operates across multiple European countries, including the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy. After mergings, BMW faced a significant challenge: solving a fragmented operational landscape.

To address this, BMW initiated a centralization effort aimed at integrating all systems into a unified system for secure access management. Augusto explains, “We needed to ensure that internal and external users could access applications securely, based on their roles. It’s about making sure only the right people can use specific features.”

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Building a scalable and secure access management system

Augusto's team used Keycloak, an open-source authentication and authorization tool, to build a centralized system. The team developed Keycloak configurations and extended its capabilities using Java and Quarkus, ensuring reliable and dynamic on-code-configuration and custom capabilities that meet the business needs.

“We integrated business rules like user roles, authentication flows, and even GDPR consent processes,” says Augusto. “Our goal was to create a scalable system that supports different user types while keeping BMW’s data secure.”

With frontend applications built in Angular and observability managed through an ELK stack, the team designed an efficient and transparent solution. The adoption of domain-driven design also helped streamline processes despite the complexity of BMW’s business ecosystem.

We created a centralized system that ensures secure access while streamlining processes across multiple markets.

Augusto Perucello

Java Engineer

Impact on BMW’s operations

The project delivered significant business value by onboarding five major European markets into the unified platform, including France, Italy, and Switzerland. This reduced licensing costs, strengthened security, and simplified system management.

“BMW has seen clear benefits in terms of cost savings, security, and streamlined processes,” Augusto shares. “We’ve received positive feedback from the headquarters, which now trusts us with additional tasks to expand the program.”