How can we enhance performance across all DORA metrics?
For many financial institutions, upgrading or enhancing a Murex environment still feels like a heavyweight operation. Releases are planned far in advance, testing cycles are long, and deployment windows are tightly constrained by operational and regulatory risk.
This approach is increasingly misaligned with today’s capital markets reality.
Continuous integration and continuous delivery or deployment, commonly referred to as CI/CD, provides a structured and automated way to evolve Murex platforms faster, more safely and with greater control. Rather than treating each update as a major event, CI/CD enables organisations to introduce change incrementally, with confidence and traceability built into every step.
Understanding the Murex platform
Murex is a long-established technology partner for banks and financial institutions operating across global capital markets. Its core platform, MX.3, supports the full lifecycle of trading and investment activities through a single integrated system.
MX.3 is designed to serve a wide range of functions, including:
- Front-office sales and trading activities
- Market, credit and liquidity risk management
- Treasury and balance sheet management
- Operations, confirmations and settlements
- Finance, accounting and regulatory reporting
Today, MX.3 is used by more than 60,000 users worldwide and supports the operations of 65 of the world’s top 100 banks, alongside asset managers, central banks and market infrastructures.
Why change management is challenging in MX environments
The strength of Murex lies in its breadth and depth. The platform covers multiple asset classes, relies on a single real-time data model and integrates tightly across front to back functions. While this architecture delivers consistency and control, it also means that even small changes can have wide-reaching impacts if not properly managed.
Without automation, testing and deployment quickly become bottlenecks.
Why CI/CD matters for Murex
CI/CD introduces discipline and automation into the software lifecycle, allowing teams to deliver changes frequently while maintaining stability and compliance.
In practical terms:
- Continuous integration ensures that configuration and code changes are regularly merged, validated and tested
- Continuous delivery prepares each change so it can be safely released at any time
- Continuous deployment automates controlled releases into production environments
For Murex platforms, this approach shifts delivery away from infrequent, high-risk upgrades towards smaller, repeatable and auditable changes.
The result is not only faster delivery, but also improved reliability and transparency.
CI/CD and operational resilience under DORA
CI/CD is increasingly recognised as a foundational capability for meeting the objectives of the Digital Operational Resilience Act.
In Murex environments, automated pipelines help reduce operational risk by limiting manual interventions and enforcing consistent deployment standards. Automated testing strengthens preventive controls, while standardised release processes improve traceability and evidence generation.
From a DORA perspective, CI/CD supports:
- Stronger ICT risk management through controlled and repeatable changes
- Improved incident prevention by detecting defects earlier
- Faster recovery through reliable rollback and redeployment mechanisms
- Enhanced audit readiness via automated logs, metrics and approvals
Rather than being a purely technical initiative, CI/CD becomes a key contributor to regulatory compliance and operational governance.
Adopting CI/CD within an MX ecosystem
Murex provides native tooling to support automation and testing, including MXtest for functional and regression testing and MxCI for integrating these tests into CI pipelines. These capabilities reflect Murex’s commitment to continuous platform evolution and regular functional and regulatory updates.
However, technology alone does not guarantee success.
To fully realise the benefits of CI/CD, organisations must also address:
- End-to-end process automation across development, testing and deployment
- Standardisation of environments and configuration management
- Clear ownership and governance aligned with risk and compliance teams
- A DevOps operating model that brings development, QA and operations closer together
CI/CD is most effective when it is treated as an organisational transformation rather than a tooling exercise.
Business and operational benefits of CI/CD for Murex
A well-implemented CI/CD framework delivers measurable value across multiple dimensions.
Accelerated delivery
Automation significantly shortens release cycles, enabling faster response to market and regulatory changes.
Lower operational cost
Reduced manual testing and fewer large-scale upgrades contribute to a lower total cost of ownership.
Improved platform stability
Frequent, smaller changes reduce the risk associated with major releases and improve overall system resilience.
Continuous currency
Staying aligned with regular Murex releases becomes achievable, reducing technical debt and obsolescence risk.
Stronger risk control
Standardised testing and deployment processes reduce the likelihood of undetected defects reaching production.
Key principles for a successful Murex CI/CD journey
Prioritise fast feedback
Short feedback loops help teams detect issues early and correct them before they escalate.
Automate consistently, not selectively
Any repeatable activity, from testing to environment provisioning, should be automated to ensure reliability and compliance.
Measure and refine continuously
CI/CD pipelines should be monitored using clear metrics such as build success rates, test coverage and deployment lead times.
Build a shared delivery culture
CI/CD requires collaboration across teams. Development, QA, operations, risk and compliance all play a role in sustainable delivery.
Let’s talk
Looking to modernise how your Murex platform evolves?
As a trusted Murex partner, Upskills powered by VISEO supports financial institutions in designing and industrialising CI/CD frameworks tailored to the realities of capital markets systems, regulatory constraints and operational risk.