ATMs Are IT Too!

NJVC Platform as a Service to Include Google Geospatial Services for NCOIC Geospatial Community Cloud Project in Support of Disaster Relief Efforts

By G C Network | July 9, 2013

CHANTILLY, Va., July 9, 2013 — NJVC® was selected by Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) to provide the platform as a service (PaaS) element of a cloud-computing-based humanitarian assistance…

Fathers of Clouds – A Tribute

By G C Network | June 14, 2013

(A guest post from Mr. Ray Holloman, NJVC Digital Communications Manager ) For more than half a century, cloud computing has changed names more often than a Hollywood starlet. Utility…

CNBC Closing Bell: Bob Gourley on NSA Leaker

By G C Network | June 13, 2013

This is clearly off topic, but I couldn’t help myself!  Please take a moment to view this CNBC video where my good friend Bob Gourley addresses this important event. Good…

Guest Blog: Sequestration and the Cloud

By G C Network | May 30, 2013

(This post was provided by Praveen Asthana, Chief Marketing Office of Gravitant, a cloud service brokerage and management company) Sequestration burst out of obscurity and entered our household vocabulary in…

Join Me at the Gartner IT Infrastructure & Operations Management Summit

By G C Network | May 22, 2013

Please  join me at the Gartner IT Infrastructure & Operations Management Summit in Orlando, Florida, June 18-20, 2013, where my session topic will be “Cloud Service Integration: Increasing Business Value…

Five Years of Cloud Musings!!

By G C Network | May 14, 2013

https://kevinljackson.blogspot.com/2008/05/hello-world-april-18-2008.html  “Sunday, April 18, 2008 Hello World ! – April 18, 2008 I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a blog for about six months now. Initially I didn’t…

Global Interoperability Consortium’s Cloud Computing Project Detailed at NATO Conference

By G C Network | April 30, 2013

PRESS RELEASEApril 30, 2013, 2:30 p.m. ET Eric Vollmecke of the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium reports  the proliferation of geospatial information will pose problems for disaster  responders and describes…

IBM Debate Series – What’s Next in IT?

By G C Network | April 25, 2013

Next week I will be participating in the inaugural session of What’s Next in IT Debate Series, a  new program of authentic debates and conversations on key technology topics. Sponsored…

Lisbon Bound: NATO Network Enabled Capability Conference 2013

By G C Network | April 21, 2013

This week I will have the honor of attending the 2013 NNEC Conference  at the Corinthia Hotel in Lisbon, Portugal. The NNEC conference is an annual event which has been sponsored by HQ…

Demystifying PaaS for Federal Government

By G C Network | April 2, 2013

Join us on April 16, 2013 at 1 PM EDT to remove the mystery surrounding Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for Federal Government https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8966264786104832512 The PaaS market is plagued with confusion, and agencies…

That world of homogenous IT technology managed entirely by the internal IT organization has long disappeared.  Operations today require efficient and global management of technologically heterogeneous environments. The challenges and mistakes organizations make when tackling this important task include:
  • Operational disconnects caused by ineffective internal communications;
  • Resource contention when multiple, independently developed project plans compete;
  • Incompatible technical documentation; and
  • Inconsistent communications with vendors.
A case in point is the finance industry which has endured some rather unique pains in this area, especially when it comes to ATM Fleet Management. According to Diebold Nixdorf, a world leader in connected commerce, this problem has been caused by three major trends that have changed the nature of ATM network management.
The first, and broadest driver of these changes has been the rapid adoption of newer and more sophisticated technology. Some reports cite that in 2014, up to 95% of the world’s ATMs were running Windows XP. That year, the entire industry was basically forced to transition to Windows 7 and this was when some banks were still using OS/2!
“These more sophisticated systems, requiring updates, patches, and support in real-time, along with software and hardware that can operate nimbly in an agnostic ecosystem. And as more and more transactions are migrated to self-service terminals, the devices must advance in complexity, too.”
Security challenges, the second key trend, are also morphing daily as threats become more and more diverse. Specific problems include physical security of the cash inside the terminal, malware threats to software and the use of data skimming devices. As banks expand their self-service networks, competition around their ability to deliver greater functionality and more complex transactions within an even tighter personally identifiable information regulatory environment is daunting.
The final trend is around management and overhead. As the traditional focus of IT support groups has changed from PCs, firewalls, routers towards the administration of an extensive network of remote self-service terminals, the scope of the required core competencies has changed tremendously. These teams must now deal with multi-vendor hardware, software, security, and services. To deal with these tectonic shifts, financial institutions are now looking to partner with technology services companies.
In this strategy shift, they are looking for a provider that brings broad multi-vendor management skills and analytics-based, proactive technical support. Additional criteria for selecting a multi-vendor management partner include:
  • Global presence with the ability to provide on-site engineering support to any ATM site;
  • Demonstrated continuity of support as exhibited by an ability to dispatch the same customer engineers on most occasions;
  • Customer engineers with proven and demonstrable experience with the same type of installation and configuration;
  • Support organizations with the breadth and depth of resources necessary to deliver high-quality support with minimal service disruption; and
  • A global logistics infrastructure capable of providing the timely delivery of parts from any vendor, if required.
IBM has proven to be a major player in this space. Their ATM and branch services support provides a predictive maintenance solution that uses advanced analytics to identify potential concerns. They then work with financial organization’s IT teams to schedule proactive support services. This proactive approach ensures proper intervention before customer service is disrupted. As a proven, global provider of multi-vendor service support, IBM can be your single agnostic vendor supporting your multi-vendor ATM environment. If your team is in need of a multi-vendor support partner, consider IBM.

This post was brought to you by IBM Global Technology Services. For more content like this, visit Point B and Beyond.

 

Cloud Musings

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS – © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2016)

 

Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson
Posted in

G C Network