2013 Forecast: The Hot Technologies That Will Define Banking
Mobility, BYOD and Enterprise Efficiency
Richard Ferrara, CTO,Woodforest National Bank
What's hot, as far as banking technology for 2013? As always, mobile will continue to be hot, especially with more and more devices making their presence known. Microsoft releasing Windows Phone 8, along with the Surface tablet and the ecosystem of Windows 8 should make things interesting. We plan to continue to enhance the mobile experience for our customers.
And mobility is not only for the customer. It's time to bring in mobility for workers so they can complete tasks from anywhere at any time. This, of course, ties into BYOD and all the security trapping along with it.
Employing technology to improve the enterprise doesn't stop at mobility and BYOD. Social tools and Big Data will help enterprises become more efficient. I like the idea of the social enterprise. Using email to share ideas seems very inefficient. Tools, such as SharePoint 2013, which includes some social components, or software that could plug into SharePoint, could be used to broaden the conversation and participation throughout the enterprise and reduce the dependence and clogging of email systems.
Finally, Big Data will probably continue to be a big buzzword in 2013. Big Data seems to tie into a broader business intelligence strategy along with social aspects associated with it. We aren't doing anything with Big Data just yet, but we might later in 2013.
The Year of Rationalizing the Cloud
Paul Schauss, President & CEO,
CCG Catalyst Consulting Group
The most significant technology for banking in 2013 will be the Cloud, and we anticipate that it will be the year of rationalizing the cloud -- when banks determine what the cloud means to them.
While there is risk management and vendor due diligence involved, moving selected services to the cloud can eliminate upfront licensing costs, decrease under-used hardware, and deploy your internal IT staff to more-strategic and less-administrative projects.
Banking IT executives will identify those applications or services that monopolize IT resources, services that can be used essentially out of the box, and services that are relatively mature in development, like office automation or email. The best cloud strategy will balance the bank’s appetite for risk by customizing a cloud deployment that utilizes some combination of public, private, and hybrid cloud environments.
While core banking might not soon move to a fully public cloud, those ancillary and support services like HR management, CRM, content, and others will see higher cloud adoption rates. As the industry comfort level with cloud computing grows, so will the number and criticality of the systems that move to the cloud.
Bryan Yurcan is associate editor for Bank Systems and Technology. He has worked in various editorial capacities for newspapers and magazines for the past 8 years. After beginning his career as a municipal and courts reporter for daily newspapers in upstate New York, Bryan has ... View Full Bio
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