Banking Technologies PANEL at ADCOM 2012

Technology is the differentiator in Banking today. Factors influencing the adoption of technology directly relate to the cost per transaction through a branch, ATM and Internet. On the average it costs about INR 70 for in-branch servicing, INR 25 for machine transactions and INR 10 for Internet transactions. The quality of service obviously has increased with this adoption of newer technologies with focused product delivery, cross selling opportunities, multi-channel touch points for consumption of services, etc. Foreign banks in India embraced new technology first and the newer private sector banks aggressively started pursuing technology-based service offering. Public sector banks have not been as aggressive in the adoption and their foray into new services has been dictated more by the Central Bank and the social obligation that they carry.

Today banks are being viewed more as technology companies offering banking products and services and services than traditional banks. Technology has enabled the banks to conceive, deliver, manage and integrate their products in line with the customer needs. Technology spends have increased with deployment of data centers, expansion of Core Banking Solutions, Disaster Recovery Plans, Security, Electronic Data Interchange, Storage Area Network, and Network Access solutions.

Bankers are finding ways to lower the total cost of ownership of their IT infrastructure which constitutes over 25% of the total expenditure. Doing more with less will become the mantra for good business practice and virtualization is a logical candidate for achieving this aim. A major opportunity lies in the outreach to rural centers which could bridge the urban-rural digital divide. While development in technology have thrown-up an array of opportunities for the banks, they have also brought along a whole set of challenges to deal with. One of the major challenges has been the requirement to integrate several islands of applications developed on varied platforms for catering to different services over a period of time. Banks looking to virtualized environments need clarity regarding quantifiable and measurable benefits that will accrue both in the Capex an Opex accounts.

A majority of top-tier banks world-wide are already implementing virtualization across different parts of their infrastructures. KRC Research indicates that in some sectors 58 % of large, tier-one banks are implementing virtualization across some aspect of infrastructure. They point out 61% of respondents were using virtualization for applications management, 54 % for networking, 48 % for operating systems and 27 % for presentation. The high level of virtualization in banks is a direct result of increasing market pressure on banks to reduce costs and manage IT resources more centrally. However, Virtualization still presents serious management challenges to smaller banks and is considered too complicated for many to attempt and adopt. Licensing issues and vendor support for the virtualized applications are in-part hampering quick adoption of virtualization.

This session at ADCOM will explore how virtualization technology itself is evolving and address questions such as:

• Is virtualization solution state-of-the-art?
• Do the banks have a virtualization strategy?
• How does virtualization map to the business goal?
• Does virtualization of IT resources increase efficiencies?
• Do they have a clear vision on the course of development of applications?
• Risk management, Data Security and virtualization?

This workshop will have keynote talks by industry professionals followed by a high level panel discussion on deployment strategies.