SAP AG, together with Microsoft, today announced a
significant milestone in its mission to help banks establish a
service-oriented architecture (SOA) for their business operations. SAP and
Microsoft, along with other founding members, have created the Banking
Industry Architecture Network (BIAN). The goal of BIAN is to help banks
ease the transition to an SOA by gathering together a community of industry
leading players and global banks who will openly share domain and technical
expertise to apply SOA principles and methodologies.
In employing these
principles, banks globally will be able to better respond to changing
customer needs and reduce risk and cost of re-engineering legacy systems
towards a more flexible operational environment.
Based on the foundation of the Industry Value Network (IVN) for Banks
created by SAP, seventeen founding members have launched BIAN; AXON,
Callatay & Wouters, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Postbank, Finanz
IT, ifb group, ING, Microsoft, SAP, Standard Bank, Steria, SunGard, SWIFT,
Syskoplan, Temenos and Zurcher Kantonalbank.
The announcement was made at a
signing ceremony, where members gathered for the official launch of the
BIAN association.
While IT infrastructure is seen as a key component to a bank's
operations, outdated and incompatible legacy systems are increasingly
becoming a hindrance in tightly linked, global financial markets. As an
association, BIAN members will work within the industry to enable a
non-disruptive, step-by-step evolution toward SOA. It will work to create a
blueprint to help banks more flexibly use software to run core banking
processes and achieve better interoperability among their IT systems
allowing them to reduce risk and costs while improving overall operations.
The open forum will offer a wide adoption of industry enterprise services
and will globally enable banks to easily utilize the results of this
collaborative effort.
A goal of BIAN is to define and encourage the development and
implementation of standardized services, which will help banks in their
daily operations by creating operational efficiencies and allowing them to
focus on growth, time-to-market and the increasing demands from their
customers. Financial institutions, software vendors and service providers,
along with technology partners, are invited to join the association and
play a collaborative role with other industry leaders in the definition,
building and implementation of next-generation banking platforms.
"Being an active member of the Industry Value Network of Banks, Credit
Suisse sees the creation of this association as significant milestone for
not only ourselves, but for the industry as a whole," said Claus Hagen,
head of Integration Architecture, Credit Suisse.
"The association will
create an open environment of members that begins with an idea and takes it
all the way through to execution."
"Microsoft is pleased to play a lead role in helping define the roadmap
for a more flexible approach across the banking industry," said Koen Van
den Brande, worldwide industry manager for core banking at Microsoft.
"A
common view of the functional scope of 'banking enterprise services' is
needed to build a next generation of agile banking platforms. This SOA-
based approach is designed to enable our largest customers to implement
more flexible banking solutions based on a new generation of banking
technologies from our partners."
Banking Industry Architecture Network Creating and Building Enterprise
Services for Banks
One of the key challenges for SOA in banking lies in the semantic
definition of services that will provide a more flexible and modularized IT
landscape. In 2005, SAP and its banking advisory board began the journey to
address this challenge by creating the industry value network (IVN) group
for Banks.
The IVN banking group, comprised of 37 financial services
institutions and software providers, was tasked with combining their own
experiences with expertise from SAP to define important SOA services and
create the blueprint for a successful transition from today's tightly
coupled IT landscape.
Recently formed as an association according to German law, BIAN has an
open intellectual property policy, which helps ensure that the
specifications that emerge from this collaboration can be implemented on a
variety of technology platforms.
BIAN members will work closely with:
-- Standards bodies: BIAN will strive wherever possible to encourage the
adoption of standards already in existence, while working
collaboratively with standards bodies for the benefit of the industry
as a whole.
-- Global banks: BIAN will work with banks worldwide on the definition of
enterprise services that maps closely to banks' in-house target
architectures for next-generation SOA and business process management-
based banking platforms.
-- Software vendors and systems integrators: BIAN will work with leading
independent software vendors and systems integrators worldwide who
want to build and implement enterprise services for banks to use with
their in-house and software vendors' platforms.
"Driving the IVN group for banks for the last two years has been a very
exciting initiative, through which SAP has been able to work more closely
with the banking industry to lead the efforts of standardizing enterprise
services and creating a path where our customers can transition their
business operations into a more flexible and agile IT environment," said
Thomas Balgheim, senior vice president, global banking line of business,
SAP.
"Through the success of the IVN, its members and SAP have turned their
goal of forming a new industry association into a reality. This will enable
members to create a truly open community."
Microsoft and its partners have long collaborated to advance the
business of banking and financial services. Together, they develop
technologies designed to enable financial institutions across the global to
run their IT systems and applications more effectively and efficiently,
allowing staff to better leverage technology to drive business success.
This is reflected in Microsoft's approach with BIAN and via this history
and acumen, Microsoft is happy to help shape the future for banking around
the important work that BIAN will deliver. BIAN will utilize the existing
value from the IVN group for banks which resulted from its collaboration
between SAP and leading banks worldwide.
Through the identification of
customer pain points, critical services and a path to standardize the
adoption of the service-oriented architecture (SOA) framework, BIAN will
help to accelerate product development under one consistent business
language.
The IVN group for banks had created an SOA taxonomy, developed a
service landscape and identified the strategic and organizational building
blocks that banks require for a successful transition to SOA. This
successful collaboration has evolved into a global community comprised of
130 participants representing 37 financial services institutions and
software providers.
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