Gartner Says Cloud Banking Can Drive 'Creative Destruction' in the Banking Industry

A rapid shift in attitude towards cloud banking is happening within the financial services industry, according to Gartner. 


A Gartner survey found that cloud is the top priority for global financial services CIOs and that 39 percent of those surveyed expect that more than half of all their transactions will be supported via cloud infrastructure and software as a service (SaaS) by 2015.


In Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), 44 percent of FS CIOs expect that more than half of all their institutions' transactions will be supported via cloud infrastructure by 2015 and 33 percent of them expect that the majority of transactions will be processed via SaaS by 2015. Gartner Says Cloud Banking Can Drive 'Creative Destruction' in the Banking Industry:


“Early cloud adoption, especially in the FS sectors, may have been limited to non-core areas and proofs of concept, but it is set to go mainstream, moving the heart of the business, transaction origination and processing, into the cloud,” said Peter Redshaw, managing vice president at Gartner. “Cloud banking should be innovative, dedicated to this industry and transformative.”



As with most cloud initiatives, cloud banking might be disruptive. It can provide the ability for attackers or defenders to try completely new services and processes, such as reverse auctions and third-party core banking systems, for example. 


Successful new cloud services can displace the existing and dominant process for design, distribution or transacting in a disruptive way, rather than just incrementally improving them, says Redshaw. 

As banks progressively replace people in the value chain with algorithmic operations (AOs) to run processes and make decisions, their intellectual property increasingly resides in these algorithms. The value of people is not in running operations but in improving the AOs, Redshaw argues. 


At a more prosaic level, cloud banking should lessen investment in bank data centers. Data center investments affected

Android Was The Only OS That Grew Share In Last Quarter

Android is the only platform that has grown over the last year in all the key markets surveyed by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. All the rest of mobile operating systems saw their market shares either stay flat or decline in at least one geography.


The figures, which compile smartphone sales for the last 12 weeks ended October 2, paint a pretty stark picture showing which platform is benefiting most from the growth in smartphone usage by consumers.

Taking the markets of Australia, Brazil, Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy, Spain and the U.S., the Android platform grew its share of smartphone sales anywhere between 19.3 percent and 50.4 percent).

Spain took the crown for the biggest amount of Android growth at 50.4 percent. Android Was The Only OS That Grew

Just under half of the U.K. population now owns a smartphone, and Google's mobile operating system Android is powering half of those those being sold,  followed by RIM's BlackBerry models with 22.5% and Apple's iPhone at 18.5 percent, for example.  Android grows share

A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs

If you only care about Steve Jobs "the legend" (and I mean that in the best possible way), and not about his personal foibles (he wasn't "perfect."), read Mona Simpon's eulogy. A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs








Stanford University Memorial Church, where the eulogy was delivered.

Are Smartphone Sales Cooling Off?

Are U.S. smart phone sales growing or not? It's a bit of a rhetorical question, as the issue is not whether smart phone sales are growing, but rather whether sales rates are declining, flat or growing. 


Third quarter results might not be a completely-reliable indicator, though. Are Smartphone Sales Cooling Off?

Apple’s third quarter sales, for example, were most likely less than expected due to the coming iPhone 4S, which will have the likely impact of pushing third quarter sales into the fourth quarter.


New product introductions often cause consumers to see what’s coming before they decide to make a purchase.

In the market for Android-based phones, the situation is a little fuzzier. Most data shows healthy Android device growth. Android sales As with the iPhone, consumers wait to for the latest product, so a rapid pace of introductions can confuse consumers and slow sales, temporarily.

One suspects that tablet interest is also partly at work. Right now, tablets are "the" hot consumer product category, and that has to be shifting discretionary income away from smart phones, toward tablets, to some extent.  

Google Offers Partners With 14 Deal Providers

Google has just announced a set of new partnerships with over a dozen niche daily deal providers, which will now be integrated into the Google Offers service, both on the Web and in the Google Shopper mobile applications for iOS and Android.

The new Google Offers partners include Dealfind, DoodleDeals, Gilt City, GolfNow, HomeRun, JuiceInTheCity, kgbdeals, Mamapedia, PlumDistrict, PopSugar Shop, ReachDeals, Active.com Schwaggle, TIPPR, and zozi.


Initially, these deals will be only available to those in the San Francisco Bay area, but this feature will soon arrive to other areas, says Google. Google Offers Partners With 14 Deal Providers 

Some are skeptical about the long-term staying power of "daily deals" services. Certainly not all of the current providers will survive. But if you believe mobile wallet services will succeed, it will be largely on the strength of deals, offers and other rewards consumers receive, as well as the loyalty, retention and customer acquisition retailers benefit from.

Mobile Wallet or Mobile Payment: What Wins in South Africa?

Sparring between contestants in competitive markets is not unusual. Neither are arguments that one or another approaches will not work, or that some approaches are "better." So it isn't unusual that a provider of one method argues the other methods "won't work" in a particular market


Standard Bank operates its own virtual currency "mimoney," which consists of a voucher number delivered to the recipient's cell phone using a text message. SMS. The bank has also teamed up with retailer Spar on a peer-to-peer money transfer service, in which SMS vouchers are redeemed at Spar stores throughout the country. 

Explosive growth in pre-paid money vouchers in South Africa has killed the mobile wallet as a viable payment instrument, says Herman Singh, CEO of Beyond Payments, a unit of Standard Bank.


Singh says that over R100 billion is generated in sales of prepaid airtime and electricity annually, while over 2.5 million money vouchers valued at over R4050 each, are created and redeemed every month in South Africa.

There are a couple of noteworthy angles here, including the use of a virtual currency mechanism and simple text messaging for communications, as well as the prepaid method of payment.

There is, to be sure, a clear argument that the leading developments in developed markets now are different than in developing markets. Mobile wallets and retail payments are bigger in developed markets because "banking and payments" are not "problems," while in developing markets these are key issues.

Likewise, the preferred communication technologies in developed markets are different from developing markets. Text messaging is ubiquitous for users of feature phones that are typical in developing markets. Other technologies are feasible in developed markets where smart phones rapidly are becoming the norm.

As a rule, mobile commerce, including both mobile payments and mobile wallet components, is a bigger issue in developed regions, while mobile banking--in particular remote payment--is a bigger opportunity in developing regions.

Pre-paid vouchers displace mobile wallet demand in South Africa

4G Mobile Backhaul: the Cartoon

This isn't the first time Accedian Networks has produced an animated approach to explaining a pretty esoteric technology topic. But it works. This time, Accedian looks at mobile backhaul for fourth generation mobile networks. 

Also, check out the return on investment calculator here. It's a practical tool for estimating the cost of various solutions, but also is crafted in a visually-appealing way. 

 

Accedian Networks