IBM, Fidelity ready for banking spending spree

IBM and Fidelity Information Services have combined their respective strengths in the financial services industry to offer banks new infrastructure solutions. Fidelity Information Services created J2EE-based components for IBM's WebSphere platform, but the offering can be applied to other non-IBM systems as well. IBM banking industry global solution executive Pablo Suarez says the new components fill a critical need in the financial services industry. "Banks used to replace the whole thing at one time on a 'Big Bang' process," he says. "That will no longer be the case as banking has become a lot more complicated and has the need for much more control and resiliency because of the laws passed after 9/11."

In addition, new IT capabilities are necessary to provide customer-centric services, instead of account-based services. Suarez says many banks are still running old mainframe systems that do not allow for these customer-centric capabilities. Potential clients can request IBM and Fidelity Information Services to perform an assessment of their systems, beginning in the first quarter of next year, when the joint offering will be available. Backed by recent studies from IDC and TowerGroup, Suarez says all banking firms are looking to improve their infrastructure. "Not only do you restructure from a technology point of view, it's the ability to relate that technology to business processes on a componentised manner. All of them want componentised solutions, so they can go to partial replacements and go to the critical parts of their financial institution," he says.

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