Managing Assets More Complex as Financial Institutions Go Global
July 8, 2008
In surveying the Financial Services playing field, the de-facto financial services organization is no longer the small local bank offering of simple banking functions and rudimentary investing instruments. Today’s financial services institutions (FSIs) are national or even multi-national institutions that offer a smorgasbord of banking and investing options. FSIs have had to undergo a variety of rebirths and are continually evolving just to keep pace with customer needs and competitive requirements.
Rolling out new banking and investing products, offering online banking and investing options, two-second trade execution guarantees, more brick and mortar branch options, and real time access to account information are just a few “givens” that FSIs must offer. The challenge for FSIs has now become one of how to support such diverse services. Charting a course that yields optimal business results is dwarfed by being able to implement an appropriate IT strategy to meet these goals.
The Operating Environment
Today’s Financial Services operating environment stands in stark contrast to the way banking and investing was conducted in the past. The number of mission-critical applications has multiplied. Trading portals, online banking, collaboration applications and internal finance applications all contend for bandwidth and have contributed to the explosion of traffic traversing the network. Access to the network now encompasses an increasingly diverse audience. Employees, partners, subcontractors and of course banking customers each require different access levels to applications and data.
While access and services were traditionally provided solely to in-house personnel, today’s footprint has migrated from the local-area network (LAN) to the wide-area network (WAN) and literally must scale to the far-flung corners of the earth. Access must be seamless, applications must be available in real-time and without delay, and data that traverses the network must be available yet secure and be fully compliant with regulatory and corporate governance standards. And while these are only some of the changes these environments have undergone, one common thread has emerged – business and IT issues are no longer independent but rather are inextricably linked.
The Challenge
There are a number of challenges that an FSI may face in building the perfect IT infrastructure to support their high-performance business requirements – but they can generally be rolled up into one overarching constraint – namely that of resource allocation. The environment in which FSIs operate is significantly more competitive than ever before. Being able to quickly identify and respond to change is crucial for survival. Outmaneuvering the competition and speed to the market can literally make the difference between industry leadership and potential extinction. At the same time, businesses are generally asked to “do more with less.” Freezes or even cutbacks in budgets and headcount force the FSI to focus on business execution while at the same time using fewer resources to do so.
The FSI simply cannot get mired in anything that does not directly and almost instantly contribute to the bottom line. Outsourcing wherever it is feasible and economically possible to do so in order to achieve economies of scale has become a very real solution for FSIs. There is no better place to leverage expertise while lowering CapEx and OpEx costs than to enlist the help of a managed services provider (MSP) that addresses both the organization’s business and IT needs.
Managed Services – Managing Your Most Important Assets
While there are individual organizational differences amongst FSI strategies, areas of focus and execution techniques, there are commonalities as well. Banking applications must be fully available at all banking locations, appropriate access must be granted to the diverse audiences in order to get the services they require. Perhaps most importantly, they must ensure the security of applications, data and users. And each of these three areas is a prime area where top MSPs can help.
Threat Mitigation
Threats that touch the FSI literally can come from anywhere. The insider threat, the outsider threat, worms, Trojans, targeted attacks, and data exfiltration are all happening to FSIs as we speak and undermine the confidence of the investor and consumers. Guarding against these attacks can be a full time job for multitudes of highly skilled security analysts and it is a prime opportunity to turn to your MSP for help.
Threat Mitigation managed services offerings are designed to address
- The newer and more complex security threats as mentioned above
- The complex issue of access control, when remote employees, partners and guests need to access network resources and applications
- Enterprise-wide protection including corporate headquarters as well as campus, remote and satellite offices
Branch Office Optimization
The modern FSI can easily span hundreds if not thousands of branch locations. Notwithstanding, applications must be fully available regardless of location. With an organization’s adoption of a decentralized footprint, MSPs can help ensure
- All applications perform to business needs when deployed over a WAN environment
- An improved user experience, productivity and satisfaction over what was considered to be a non-differentiated environment in the past
- Enhanced performance for Web-based interfaces whether the user is at a headquarters or a branch location
Remote Access with Mobility
With an ever-increasing distributed service area, it is not uncommon for users to access network resources while on the road and with a variety of managed and unmanaged access devices including laptops, PDAs, Blackberry type devices, and more. As a result, applications must scale beyond remote offices and provide remote access even while “off network.” An MSP can help businesses save time, effort and valuable resources by offloading this resource-intensive task. With the help of an MSP, the task of supporting different endpoint devices that an employee may use to access the network when they are not on the corporate network and maintaining continuous access as a user moves between networks can be greatly simplified.
Curbing Your Enthusiasm
Managed Services has gained extreme traction within the FSI community for its ability to address key IT issues, yet there have also been horror stories. For an FSI to truly reap the rewards of deploying a managed service, it is paramount to find a managed service provider that is able to meet your needs and can form a collaborative and long term joint partnership.
In order for the partnership to work, the MSP must solve your specific business challenges in a comprehensive way. Simply providing solutions that address the headquarters location only provides a solution to a small subset of the total population—the managed services solution must be able to scale to branch, satellite and remote users as well. Furthermore, a managed service offering that only addresses IT issues is yesterday’s news and most probably will not provide a long term fix for your organization. Because IT and business challenges are now linked, it is best to consider MSPs that provide a solution that can address both.
There is no questioning the fact that FSIs must contend with challenges that even 10 years ago were not on most of the radar of most organizations. With these challenges though come opportunities that can accelerate the growth of your business. The key to seizing the opportunity is via a partnership with the right MSP.
About Michael Segal and Michael Rothschild: Michael Segal is the head of enterprise solutions management and marketing at Juniper Networks. He is responsible for the analysis, definition, management, and marketing of solutions, inclusive of the full Juniper portfolio that is relevant to the market. Segal joined Juniper in June of 2006, after spending almost 10 years at Cisco Systems where he was most recently leading the product line management and technical marketing of wireless mobility solutions. Segal earned a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, Cum Laude, from Technion in Israel and an M.B.A in Marketing from the Tel Aviv University in Israel. He owns three patents in remote access, wireless and mobility technologies.
Michael Rothschild is the senior manager for solutions marketing at Juniper Networks responsible for managed services. He has extensive experience in marketing and product marketing. He has held senior marketing positions in technology companies that were newly launched, went IPO, and were acquired. Rothschild is also a Professor of Marketing at Yeshiva University in New York City and has published several works on marketing strategies. Email feedback to juniperarticles@juniper.net.
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Nice writing. You are on my RSS reader now so I can read more from you down the road.
Allen Taylor