SOA filling the Gaps

Few years ago I watched a bank's branch working process. Senior Bankers received a digital card which should be passed prior to executing operations requiring higher level of Authorization.  Other bankers has lower Authorization level. They did not receive these cards. They are prohibited from executing high level authorized operations. The Computerized Branch systems were built according to the defined Authorization levels. However, Senior Bankers were busy. When another banker asked a senior banker to perform an operation very often he gave him his digital card instead of executing the operation and asked him to execute the operation behalf of the Senior and Busy Banker. The real Authorization system was different from the formal analyzed, designed and developed systems. The real system authorized every banker to execute most operations. The formal system limited Authorization of non-Senior Bankers. This kind of dissonance between implemented systems and ...

According to Bloomberg, Verizon Communication Inc. has emerged as the most likely buyer of Yahoo! Inc . The deal will may be announced in few days. Nobody is surprised that Yahoo! is going to be acquired. It is a strong brand with quite good software products. However, for many years its Business results were not good enough. Yhaoo!'s Search Engine was a leading product until Google dominated the market. Since than Yahoo! replaced its top management and its strategy frequently. It tried to acquire Google and Facebook and Microsoft tried to acquire it on 2008. Yahoo!'s most successful investment was buying 35% of Ali Baba 's stocks on 2005. 40% of its Ali Baba stocks were sold on 2012. Other Yahoo!'s assets Flickr  - an Image hosting and Video hosting website content services such as Yahoo! Finance Tumblr  - microblogging and social networking website Communication services such as Mail, Messenger, Chat, Maps etc.  Why would a Telco co...

LinkedIn headquarters on Sterlin Court in Mount View California source: Wikipedia Microsoft and LinkedIn announced on 13th June that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Microsoft will acquire Linkedin for 196 USDs per share in an all-cash transaction valued 26.2 billions . On 2011 Microsoft acquired Skype. I had seen Warning Signs ahead . Will the agreed acquisition of LinkedIn stimulate new Warning signs? On 2013 Microsoft  acquired Nokia  in order to compete in the Smartphones market. Microsoft is not a significant player in the  Smart phones market. Will Microsoft fail, as well, in the Social Networks  market? When Steve Ballmer stepped down as the CEO of Microsoft I updated my Vendors Survival post about Microsoft .  Almost a year afterward I revisited my forecast   and I was more optimistic. The reason for my optimism was Satya Nadella's new strategy: Cloud First.  Will L...

A broad metal chain made of torus-shaped links Source: Wikipedia 9 years ago I wrote a post titled: The Chain is as Strong as the Weakest Link in the Chain . Based on my experience in a Penetration Test, I argued that human beings are the weakest link.  Many employees Security awareness is insufficient. Few employees are even motivated to breach Security.   As far as the home computing or the consumers computing is concerned, there is even less Security Awareness than in organizations. I am a Security and Risk Management expert, therefore I should be aware of Cyber and Security threats and I should refrain from being damage by these threats.  I am certainly aware of them, however I failed twice by ignoring a potential threat. This post is about lessons learned from my Security protection failures.  I love you - I hate you Many years ago I received an e-mail message from a friend. My friend is an IT expert,...

Many large banks are IBM Mainframes users. They use mainframes for decades. They use other platforms as well, but their Core Banking systems are deployed on Mainframes. Recently leading Cloud Computing vendors such as Amazon , Microsoft and Google approached large banks in order to start migration of systems to their Public Clouds.  I looked for evidence supporting the notion that Banks are transforming from Mainframes to Public Clouds. I found no evidence. I am not the one to be blamed for not finding any significant evidence, because there is no evidence supporting the notion cited above.  Banks are using Public Clouds but... Like many other organizations, banks are using Public Clouds applications. However, they do not use it for Core Banking systems deployment. They use Public Clouds for applications which are less integrated with the Core Banking systems. If they will not use Public Clouds for Core Systems, IBM Mainframes will be used for many years. Public...

The title of the post summarize the bottom line of my recommendation to a customer.  The Short List included three software products. Two of the products were owned by the same vendor. Let call the best product product A, the worst product product C and the third product product B. Why I recommended not to select the best product? In my opinion, product A was better than the other two technically and conceptually. However, the same vendor was selling product B as well. Due to overlapping products in companies acquired by the vendor he owned two competing products. The key question was: Which product is the vendor's strategic product? My answer to this question was: product B is the strategic product. My customer was buying a significant product for Long Term. For the long term, the vendor will invest in Research and Development in product B.  He will invest as less as he can in product A. The support to this product's customers will be minimal.  Ven...

Few years ago I discussed the issue of Banking Channels and Customer Centric in a post titled: The Marriage of Customer Centric and Multi-Channel . I argued that Customer Centric Bank It services should enable use of the preferred Channel or mixed Channels by each customer. It looked like more valuable customers preferred Self Service Channels, mainly the Internet Channel.   A year ago, I wrote another post: Is Mobile Banking a unique Channel? The bottom line was: It is not yes a unique Channel, however, it is enhancing the trend for usage of Self Service Channels.  Guess what, more valuable bank's customers prefer this Channel.   Recently, I read Business Insider 's article titled: Digital lenders have a 1 trillion opportunity - this sidedeck has everything you want to know about them . The article is based upon a research published by Autonomous Research . Autonomous Research is a financial specialist research company. The research notes t...