How Guosen Securities Achieved Level‑2 DevOps Excellence in Its Gold Sun Mobile App

Editor’s Note

According to a McKinsey study, the success of technology companies hinges on standardization and tool empowerment. Standards capture best practices, and embedding them in tools lets people focus on higher‑value work, aligning with the core idea of technical‑operations standards.

GOPS Conference & Assessment Result

On 27 November 2020, the 15th GOPS Global Operations Conference was held in Shanghai, organized by OSCAR, GreatOPS and OOPSA. The conference announced the second batch of DevOps standard technical‑operation assessment results. Guosen Securities’ “Gold Sun” project passed the Level‑2 evaluation of the “Research‑Development‑Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model” conducted by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), marking the firm as the second securities company in the South‑China region to achieve this level.

Interview with Yang Yang, GM of System Operation Department

Project Overview

Guosen Securities is among the top eight innovative securities firms. The Gold Sun mobile APP is a self‑developed, one‑stop financial investment platform offering real‑time market data, news, account opening, trading, and wealth‑management services. By Q3 2020 the app had over 14 million registered users and more than 8 million securities customers, with a rich set of information services such as research reports, expert opinions, stock data, intelligent selection and search.

Significance of Level‑2 Certification

Passing Level‑2 indicates that the project meets the domestic advanced level for technical‑operation capabilities. The assessment covers 35 dimensions, including monitoring, incident & change management, configuration, capacity & cost management, high‑availability, business continuity, and user‑experience management. The Gold Sun project excelled in monitoring‑tool integration, efficient architecture design, data and process integration, and demonstrated industry‑leading practices.

Why the Evaluation Was Pursued

The team aims to build a standardized, automated, platform‑based, data‑driven, and intelligent operation management system. The DevOps assessment is not only a certification but a catalyst for elevating the organization’s overall DevOps practice and establishing a mature, organization‑wide technical‑operation framework.

Impact and Improvements After the Assessment

The assessment deepened the team’s understanding of DevOps standards, broadened their vision, and provided a holistic view of technical‑operation. They have constructed a unified CMDB, integrated over 30 platform tools covering resources, user experience, business monitoring, processes, and automation, and improved incident handling, change frequency, capacity monitoring, and disaster‑recovery drills.

Technical Highlights of the Gold Sun System

The app is built on a self‑developed micro‑service framework (Zebra) and open‑source distributed technologies, migrating from a traditional bus architecture to full micro‑service deployment with continuous delivery pipelines. Containerization pilots have started. Deployment spans a private‑cloud “same‑city + remote‑site” three‑datacenter setup with multiple Internet links, while static assets are served via public‑cloud CDN. Traffic routing, automatic speed testing, weighted load‑balancing, and hot‑update mechanisms are in place.

Challenges Faced and Solutions

Gap analysis revealed weaknesses in user‑experience management and cost control. The team performed multi‑round gap assessments, broke down tasks, coordinated across sub‑teams, and completed the required improvements within four months, achieving full compliance across all evaluation items.

Perspective on the DevOps Standard

The standard strengthens development‑operations collaboration, standardizes internal processes, and integrates resources to boost high‑availability and rapid delivery. Guosen plans to evolve from ITIL‑based steady‑state management to an agile, DevOps‑centric operation model, leveraging data‑driven insights, automation, and intelligent‑ops capabilities.

Future Roadmap

Building on the assessment, the team will maintain strengths, address remaining gaps, and aim for a Level‑3 DevOps continuous‑delivery assessment. Best practices from the Gold Sun project will be replicated to other business systems, raising the organization’s overall operational maturity and creating greater business value.

DevOps Capability Maturity Model

The “Research‑Development‑Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model” is a series of standards led by CAICT, co‑created with OSCAR, GreatOPS, BATJ, and major financial and telecom enterprises. It is the first domestic DevOps series standard and was officially concluded by the ITU‑T in July 2020 as the world’s first international DevOps standard. The model covers agile development management, continuous delivery, technical operation, application design, security & risk management, and system & tool aspects.