Welcome Guest. | Log In| Register | Membership Benefits
  • Email this page E-mail this page
  • |  Print Print this page
  • |   Bookmark and Share
  • |  icon
  • | 

Eight Banks Join SAP In Development of Service-Oriented Architecture


Anti-money laundering among one of the intended early uses of the network.

By Ivan Schneider
Bank Systems & Technology
January 3, 2006 08:54 PM

SAP (West Chester, Pa.) has lined up several banks to participate in its Industry Value Network for Banks, a consortium that will define business processes that can be shared between network members, deployed as components of a service-oriented architecture (SOA). The participating banks announced last month are ABN Amro, Absa, Barclays, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Postbank, ING, and Standard Bank.

The idea is to identify business processes that do not add strategic advantage for banks, and then make these processes available as a networked resource so that participating banks can accomplish them at a lower cost.

One example of how it might be used is in anti-money laundering (AML), a compliance area in which cooperation can lead to better results than independent efforts. "One of the biggest expenses [banks] have right now is in the area of compliance, specifically because the networks are not linked together," says Jim Hughes, SAP's senior vice president of financial services, North America.

"There is no value for [a bank] setting up a world-class AML group," adds Hughes. "There's all kind of value for us setting up a global AML group."

Such a global component for AML would increase the utility of the service in that money launderers trying to use the banking network would find it more difficult to switch between money center banks. Similar network benefits might be find for other business processes, both inside and outside of compliance. As such, the ability to use one of the SOA components would not be limited to customers of SAP. "The processes cannot be just SAP-specific, but they have to be industry-specific," says Hughes.

As an SOA, the Industry Value Network would not rely upon a central hub for managing either network traffic or data, but rather upon a peer-to-peer networking model. "If it was built on top of a classic hub-and-spoke model, by definition it would have inherent limitations," says Hughes. "It has to be scalable, highly flexible, and accessible by all members, both on and off networks. Those are the kind of value points that we can achieve very readily."


Subscribe to RSS


Advertisement

CAREER CENTER
Ready to take that job and shove it?



TechCareers

SEARCH
Function:

Keyword(s):

State:
SPONSOR
RECENT JOB POSTINGS
CAREER NEWS
10 Search Engines You Don't Know About
Go beyond Google and get vertical. These specialized search sites will help you find the business information you need -- fast.

Yahoo Profits Fall 23%, Cuts 1,000 Jobs
Ari Balogh was named to the post of chief technology officer as the companys for a "realignment" of employees.

More articles from our career center





Subscription Info
Apply for a free 52-week subscription to InformationWeek (a $199 value)

Last Name:

First Name:

Title:

Company Name:

City:

Business Address:

Zip:

State:

Email Address:

NOTE: Offer valid for U.S., U.S. possessions, & Canada only

            

Join economist Chris Cornell and 3 CIOs in an Exclusive Online Exchange for Senior IT Executives: Using IT to Drive Value in a Turbulent Economy. November 5th only.