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February 9, 2012
Development Testing and Banking IT: Achieving a New Era in Software Quality
February 15, 2012
What's the Ideal Web Experience for Today's Financial Services Consumer?
Blog
Featuring commentary from the editors of Bank Systems & Technology, as well as other bank technology industry experts.Art Buchwald, thanks for the boost
January 19, 2007 @ 14:07 PM | By Art Gillis
By Art Gillis June 14, 1983 - Art Buchwald sent me a letter saying he enjoyed my piece very much and I should send it to Personal Computing, Popular Computing, Info World and Byte for publication. I sent the article to Art Buchwald because after I had written it, I read it and it sounded like something he would have written. So I wanted to clear it with him first. Looking back at my records, it turns out I didn't take his advice because I was in banking, and generic publications didn't interest me. Independent Banker magazine published it under the title, "Are Computers Really Becoming Friendlier?" I've got three "works of art" hanging on my office walls - George Washington, a 1958 photo of a missile in front of my office building at SAC Hq. and Art Buchwald's letter. Sometimes I think I can hear Art Buchwald's letter speaking to me in that unique voice.
continued...Comment on this blog entry
In my opinion, bank tech solutions are priced too low
January 16, 2007 @ 09:38 AM | By Art Gillis
By Art Gillis The other night, I flew home from Boston to Dallas on what was a very nice flight. It left on time. It arrived on time. A Tasmanian Devil didn't sit next to me. In fact, I could have had several rows to myself. I didn't eat anything. And the PA system must have been out of order, or maybe it just didn't blow me out of my seat. I even managed a couple of cat naps. It reminded me a little of my no-nonsense trips from SAC Hq. to Vandenberg Air Force Base in the fifties. SAC didn't charge me a penny for 1,500 miles of travel because I was an "employee." Today, I have no allegiance to American Airlines except that I live in their city, and yet they charged me a mere $115 for 1,700 miles of travel. They even threw in a free ginger ale. That's why I believe the airlines are going broke. I see the same thing happening with bank tech vendors if they don't wake up and charge more for their tech solutions. Whether a bank chooses an in-house system or outsourcing, they're getting a real bargain. Here's just one example. A bank that chooses to go in-house pays a one-time license fee for software. Then it agrees to pay 15 percent to 20 percent of the license fee annually forever. Even after 30 years, a bank can run on its updated system thanks to three-times-a-year software releases, and never has to go through another conversion. Bill Gates wouldn't be the richest man in the world if he had used that pricing scheme for MS-DOS. I think the cheap lunch idea should end. Bank tech vendors should put a time cap on their solutions, like there's a new pricing paradigm every 10 years, or they should sunset their systems and start over every 10 years. Or maybe I'm just overreacting to the sweet deal banks are getting because it's time for me to trade in my 13-year-old Jaguar for a new one, and there goes my budget. I wish it were like software from a bank tech vendor.
continued...Comment on this blog entry
A New Year's resolution for systems developers
January 08, 2007 @ 09:28 AM | By Art Gillis
By Art Gillis Eight days into my New Year's resolution and I'm on track. That qualifies me to tell others what their resolutions should be. 1. Build new automated processes by throwing out the old concepts. Start by asking, "What are we doing here?" not, "How did the old system work?" In the 50s, new systems were designed as if the 80-column punched card was never going to disappear. Some bank systems today start as a customer enters the branch. But in many cases the branch is the customer's home. 2. Eight years ago, Internet applications were developed by geeks and nerds. Today, normal people who are not geeks and nerds use the Internet. So they can't adapt to the culture. What we need today is the humanization of the Internet. A sort of "for the people, by the people." It seems perfectly normal to throw away a PC after using it a couple of years. But we keep our bank systems for decades as if nothing changed.
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