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S. O.
F. T. W. A. R. E.
BANKS:
Robust Banking Solution With A Difference
The
rapid growth in technology is transforming the global
financial services industry, including the banking,
insurance, securities sector. The financial services'
traditional problem solving - addressing the problem
with stand alone solution - no longer works, and potential
opportunities cannot be grasped.
Today, many financial services firms are deploying Web-based
applications that help them develop new delivery channels,
provide competitive customer care, manage their resources
efficiently and address new economic pressures.
About two years ago, the International Computer Systems
(ICS) Limited announced the successful completion of
its full automation of the newly established Unity Bank,
one of the banks that emerged as a result of the merger
of nine different Nigerian Banks concluded in March
2006. It was immediately after this that ICS commenced
the automation project, which led to the banking solution
giant gaining 16% of the Nigerian Banking market in
only a matter of 8 months.
Since then, ICS' BANKS solution has now been launched
in 220 branches of Unity Bank across Nigeria, with the
ability to adopt and expand both regionally and globally
using ICS' Web-enabled Banking solution a complete integrated
banking system for its various banking environments
running on oracle 10g platform.
The advanced technologies that ICS has now established
at the heart of Unity Bank represent an important part
in the consolidation and strengthening of the Nigerian
Banking industry, and reflect the Central Bank of Nigeria's
(CBN) strategy to empower Nigeria as a pre-eminent financial
hub in Africa.
Unity Bank is
now at the forefront of the push to build technical capacity,
leading the way in advanced services within Nigeria itself
and even providing the ability to manage external reserves
for other African countries.
The ICS solution utilizes the world's leading technologies
to deliver extraordinary value, through unifying financial
charts of account,
balance sheets, chain
management and redefining internal banking processes, while
using the Oracle 10g database on a LINUX operating system along
with multi-Lingual features.
Unity Bank chose the BANKS application after a detailed review
of leading vendors and global competitors.
Dr. Evans Woherem, Unity Bank's Executive Director in charge
of Operations and I.T services noted, “As a bank after
a rigorous review and selection exercise that covered all the
banking applications within Nigeria as well as few applications
overseas, we decided to choose BANKS because of its amazing
set of functionalities, user-friendliness, the synergy between
its modules and the robust MIS it comes with. We were also comforted
by ICS' record of successful implementations and support services”
Dr. Woherem informed that presently, the bank has moved from
BANKS I to BANKS II and has succeeded in customizing its applications
to meet with the increasing demands of its customers.
ICS' BANKS integrated its systems within 8 months into its development
with Unity Bank, including the training of over 1,400 employees
ensuring record speed and Total Solution automation in the Banking
and Financial industry. Dozens of other top tier banks have
been successfully automated across the Middle East, Africa and
Europe including other leading Nigerian banks in West Africa
such as GT Bank, and Sterling Bank, as well as banks in Gambia
and Sierra Leone.
The BANKS solution for commercial banks and financial institutions
is an integrated banking solution implemented in hundreds of
branches in over a dozen banks across three continents. Designed
to meet the information processing and management challenges
facing the banking and finance industry today, BANKS is web-enabled
and comes with a comprehensive set of integrated functions covering
the areas of Retail, Corporate and Investment Banking.
BANKS was developed with embedded state-of-the-art features
including: 24/7 banking through a variety of delivery channels
(Branches, Internet, Phone, Mobile, ATM & POS); Straight
Through Processing (STP) offering End-to End event-driven processing
capabilities; Open architecture that enables the system to fully
interface with existing information technology infrastructure
as well as telecommunications networks (S.W.I.F.T., Telex, Reuters,
etc.).
Comprehensive security features are built into the software
to manage system access, enforce confidentiality of information,
ensure data integrity and contain frauds.
BANKS solution is built around Oracle's relational database
as a reliable open technology platform, with the choice of Client/Server
or N-Tier (Web-Enabled/Thin-Client) architecture providing portability,
scalability and 7x24 availability.
BANKS is a multilingual, multi currency system with multi institution
and multi branch capabilities, recognizing the business processing
demands for clients in international banking environments.
The solution provides total flexibility using an easily customized,
fully-parameterised, modular architecture to allow clients total
control over customizing functionality so that the system meets
their specific needs, improves operational effectiveness and
responds to varying local and regional requirements.
Clients can add modules at their own convenience, define and
launch new products and services, and generate reports and enquiries
using industry standard tools.
ICS in-house Banking and Finance consultants have successfully
delivered turnkey solutions to clients of all sizes, providing
project management, technical support, training, and complete
system customization services.
ICS provides modern solution methods which can be used in their
own right or combined with other applications in order to achieve
full system integration within an enterprise. They are designed
to pull everything together, from the inception of an accounting
event through to detailed general ledger postings, so as to
achieve fast and regular reporting of information between different
departments.
International Computer Systems (London) Ltd. was founded in
1978 as a Systems Integrator and Turn-Key solutions provider.
It enjoys an unbroken record of successful banking solutions
implementation throughout a quarter of a century of successful
banking automation projects with over 50 banks across three
continents.
Software
Is ICT Industry's Engine Room -Omotosho By Ifeanyi Osueke
The Information Technology industry in Nigeria is no doubt
growing in leaps and bounds as firms and organisations
continue to vigorously task their ingenuity to catch up
with other developed countries of the world in the application
of ICT tools so as to recover wasted years.
These companies explore various options like external
collaboration, partnership and representations. The result
is becoming positive by the wake of the day as Nigeria
is consistently moving upwards in world ratings of IT
applications usage. More gladdening is the recent report
by a reputable
media organisation that Nigeria will soon become a choice
destination for the world software market outsourcing.
In an effort to achieve this feat, local IT firms are not
limiting their exploit to specific areas of the industry such
as hardware or software instead, they explore both areas simultaneously
while others choose to specialize on area of core competence
software or hardware.
One of such IT firms that have consistently expanded its bounds
is Data Recovery Specialist Limited, a company reputed with
the use of both soft and hardware to recover lost data irrespective
of volume and time of loss.
The company's Managing Director Mr. Bolanle Omotosho once
said that software is an essential driver of the ICT industry
as almost every technology is powered by unseen force known
as software.
Even in data recovery business he said, “The three things
that are required to recover data are skill, hardware and
software tool,” a requirement most indigenous recovery
companies such as Data recovery competently posses.
Worried by the neglect of the software industry, Mr. Omotosho
blamed financial institutions for their interest in immediate
gains rather than long term for areas like the software sector.
According to him, “If you discover a problem and develop
software to solve that problem, it will take at least one
year for that software to be perfect. For you to test your
solution around so that people can believe it, it will take
another one year. That is why individuals and companies such
as banks find it difficult to invest in software development.
Their thinking is that they will make more money by investing
in the capital or money market or even real estate.”
In its determined effort to tackle all manner of data loss
and to transform to a world class firm with global presence
like most of the acclaimed international brands, Data Recovery
sought and got exclusive business operation of Myung Information
Technologies Company of Korea, a first class international
Recovery firm which pioneered data recovery in Korea in the
90s.
By this right, Data Recovery Limited automatically runs its
businesses in all West African countries using its proprietary
tools, technologies, skills, and business model. Though Data
Recovery Limited is a branch of the global network organisation,
it is allowed to retain its name.
Explaining the business of data recovery, Mr. Omotosho said,
“Data Recovery is a science of recovering/salvaging
lost data files from a crashed, corrupted, or physically damaged
electronic storage device, this could be a hard disk, CD/DVD,
flash drive, tape drive, or any kind of an electronic storage
device. In the forensic parlance, data recovery is a critical
step towards uncovering lost or deleted information assets
in order to defend or establish a business case”
Mr, Omotosho has vowed to empower Nigerians having expanded
his business tentacles by appointing sub business operators
who will serve as collection centres for customers, and also
log the jobs online at 5p.m everyday.
He further explained that Data recovery supports e-payment
system. “In actual fact, we will be saving lives if
critical payroll system should crash and the last month credible
back up is not available. That would definitely delay people's
salaries. Our ability to quickly restore the file will lower
people's blood pressure as they get their pay timely, and
also ensure the e-payment system continues to work.”
IBM
Plans Sun Micro Buy-over –Report
IBM is in talks
to buy Sun Microsystems Inc, for at least $6.5 billion,
in a deal that could bolster IBM's computer server products
against rivals such as Hewlett-Packard Co, the Wall Street
Journal has reported.
In recent months, Sun has approached a number of large
tech companies in the hopes of being acquired. HP declined
the offer, and International Business Machines (IBM) Corp
and Sun compete in the market of supplying servers that
power corporate computer systems.
The top five server vendors, including IBM, HP and Sun,
posted declines in their fourth-quarter server revenue,
according to figures from market researcher IDC released
in February.
Sun, whose name
stands for Stanford University Network, rose to prominence
in the 1990s when tiny start-ups flocked to buy its high-end
computers, which run on its Solaris operating system and have
long been widely used in the financial services industry.
When the Internet bubble burst in 2000-01, funding for start-ups
dried up along with much of the demand for Sun's computers.
Sun stock is down 71 percent in the last 52 weeks, a far cry
from an all-time high of $258.75 that it touched during the
dot-com boom.
Next
Phase of Unlimited Potential Programme launched
Microsoft
has announced the launch of the third phase of its Unlimited Potential
(UP) Programme grant, which aims to facilitate information technology
capacity building in Nigeria.
Citizenship manager for Microsoft Nigeria, Hajia Jummai Umar-Ajijola
made the announcement at a cheque presentation ceremony in Abuja
recently, saying that this phase of the grant will focus on the
youth in the FCT and in the North Central, Ajegunle in Lagos, South
West and on widows in the South East.
“The excellent results of the first two phases of the UP grant
have given us the confidence to continue to invest in changing lives
across Nigeria's six geo-political zones,” Umar-Ajijola said.
“The personal impact stories of the many beneficiaries of
the programme prove that, given the right skills and opportunities,
every individual - no matter their wealth or social standing - has
the potential to contribute positively to their communities.”
Umar-Ajijola commended the NGO partners who demonstrated great commitment
to ensuring that the under-served in their various areas were reached
through the programme.
The UP Programme is a Microsoft initiative targeted at delivering
relevant, accessible and affordable solutions in three interrelated
areas that are crucial to developing economic opportunity - transforming
education, fostering local innovation and enabling jobs and opportunities.
The UP grant programme for Nigeria, which commenced in 2007 - in
partnership with the Chief Bola Ige Information Technology Centre
(BIITC) - set out to empower Nigerians, particularly the under-served,
through the acquisition of IT skills to enhance their potential
in every sphere of life.
The centre director of the BIITC, Manny Emecheta, said: “The
programme has been a resounding success, impacting over 4,000 beneficiaries
across Nigeria.
“It has opened up new windows of opportunity for the beneficiaries
and enabled them to increase their market scope with exposure to
a wider community of people engaged or interested in their skills.”
He highlighted the story of Hajiya Halima, one of the beneficiaries
of the North East Zone programme in Bauchi run by Professor Iya
Abubakar Computer Resource Centre.
As part of the ceremony, the Professor Iya Abubakar Computer Resource
Centre, a sub grantee of BIITC held an exhibition of the innovative
use of technology in evolving skills for improved social and economic
livelihood of the centre's trainees. The exhibition included locally
made cosmetics, perfumery, beddings and other household items.
Hajiya Halima, who has now established a project, the 'Muassasa
Foundation' to impart the skills she learnt from the training to
other women in her community, was selected to share her best practices
for community impact with representatives of NGOs from Africa &
the Middle East at the 3rd Global Knowledge Conference held in Malaysia.
The first and second phases of the program targeted the following
groups in the various geo-political zones:
Abuja [North Central] (Physically challenged women in shea butter
and weaving business, unemployed female graduates and women of grass
root awareness). Abeokuta [South West] (Women in tie & dye business);
Bauchi [North East] (Women in seclusion); Enugu [South East] (Fishermen
& women); Kaduna [North West] (Women traders and farmers).
In 2008 BIITC extended the training to stigmatised women (people
living with HIV/Aids) and children of policemen.
Microsoft has been the sole sponsor of these training programmes
with grants of US $90,000 and $60,000 sponsored to the programme
in 2007 and 2008 respectively. A sum of $70,000 (N11, 550,000.00)
was presented to the NGOs at the event held in Abuja.
SUSE
Linux Enterprise 11 released
Novell
has unveiled SUSE Linux Enterprise 11, with features and capabilities
that reflect the company's controversial multiyear agreement with
Microsoft.
In 2006, Microsoft and Novell agreed to work on improving compatibility
between their products, and pledged not to pursue patent claims
against each other's customers. The move has been widely decried
by open-source software advocates.
But the relationship has borne significant fruit, according to Novell.
The vendor said SUSE 11 will work “seamlessly” with
Windows regarding areas like systems management, virtualization,
document formats, and even multimedia.
A new feature called Mono Extension provides support for Mono, allowing
companies to run .Net applications on Linux systems without having
to recompile the programs. The extension will also enable IBM System
z mainframe users to run .Net applications.
SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 runs on a wide range of hardware and has
also been optimized for “near-native” performance on
a range of hypervisors, including VMware ESX, Microsoft Hyper-V,
and Xen.
International Computer
Systems (London) Ltd. has showcased its fully integrated banking solution
software BANKS® at the Middle East most exclusive financial technology
event MEFTEC, that took place from 10- 11 February 2009, at the Kingdom
of Bahrain- the Middle East's premier financial centre, under the auspices
of the Central Bank of Bahrain.
ICS (London) has been sponsoring and exhibiting MEFTEC for the past several
years, following the frequent successful participations, excellent feedback
results and winning lead opportunities. As a Silver Sponsor, ICS (London)
is committed to provide its hosted delegates an impressive and exclusive
demonstration of BANKS® total solutions at MEFTEC.
With the alliance of its partners, Pio-Tech and Access to Arabia, ICS
(London) booth was one of the outstanding ones that captured delegates'
attention, due to its unique and distinguished design and stimulating
fully constructed demonstration for total integrated solutions for any
bank's Information Technology needs that was given to the hosted delegates
solely.
ICS (London) celebrated its 30th anniversary where it started as a System
Integrator and Turn-Key project solution provider, then introduced BANKS®
as a complete integrated parameterized End-to-End Solution that covers
all banking activities. ICS (London) has over than 54 clients implementing
BANKS® through Asia, Africa and Europe. Its head offices are based
in London UK, and has nine branches mostly located in the Middle East,
Africa and Europe.
ICS (London) involvement in the Middle East region started by Arabization
and providing integrated solutions in the beginning of its establishment
in London, then launched a subsidiary company in the Middle East in 1982;
Computer and Communications Systems Ltd. -CCS, which is one of the Middle
East's leading and largest Information Technology companies that provides
assistance in every aspect of the Information Technology's consultancy,
development, networking, infrastructure, implementation, training, and
on-going maintenance.
Vice President of Business Development at ICS (London), Mr. Wail Malkawi
who has been attending MEFTEC for the past several years, emphasized on
how important ICS's participation in MEFTEC towards the company's manifestation
in the MEASA region; Middle East, Africa and South Asia.
“As MEFTEC 2009 is the fifth annual edition, subsequent to a previous
escalation of recognition and a specific focus on the MEASA region, it
is the centre of the banking and financial technology industry. ICS solutions
are committed to deliver an extraordinary value to the exhibition, through
BANKS® software, which is the ideal software for leading Banks”.
ICS (London) demonstrated BANKS® solutions, emphasizing on BANKS®
Islamic, as the Kingdom of Bahrain is the world's premier Islamic financial
centre that embraces the largest Islamic Institutions and Islamic Banking
sector. Several Islamic banks visited ICS' stand, and were surprised by
the mobility, flexibility and the complete integration of the Islamic
modules.
EMC
Launches Virtual Management Tools
EMC has launched Smarts Server
Management, an analysis tool for managing virtualized data centers,
on Wednesday.
Using a behavioral model for systems, Smarts Server Management (SSM)
is able to understand the relationships between virtual servers, physical
servers and the network, EMC said in a statement.
It can also “distinguish how symptoms are propagated to related
infrastructure components”.
The latest addition to EMC's Smarts line of automated IT management
tools, SSM is intended to increase the control of and compliance across,
mixed data centre environments.
EMC claims it can help alleviate some of the complexity of managing
systems.
A core feature is root-cause analysis, which works on VMware ESX
server hosts, virtual
machines and applications, EMC said. Root-cause analysis is a tool that
can examine a physical or virtual server to try to establish why it has
had a problem or there has been a failure. This can be a time-consuming
task without an effective analysis tool.
Root-cause analysis is a key feature of SSM, according to analysts. Bob
Laliberte, analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, is quoted in EMC's statement
as saying: “Because VMware VMotion can rapidly move applications
from one server to another to balance workloads; customers seek more efficient
ways to manage certain manual tasks such as root-cause analysis, especially
in large environments.”
“Root-cause analysis is a bit of a holy grail,” Tony Lock,
of analysts Freeform Dynamics, told ZDNet Asia's sister site ZDNet UK.
“The key point is, 'Does it work?'. If it does and can do so quickly,
then it becomes very attractive.”
The important issue was that many such tools do not work well, or work
at all, Lock said.
SSM allows systems managers to identify root-cause issues across physical
and virtual domains by extending EMC's Smarts Root Cause Analysis and
Codebook Correlation technology to virtual servers using behavioral models.
EMC has not announced a specific price for SSM, but said that the software
is available immediately, and pricing is based on "discovery and
availability management per domain" and the number of devices to
be managed under each domain.
Oracle
Announces More CRM Functionality
Oracle has announced
the introduction of five Customer Relationship Management [CRM] products
- leading on demand CRM service that continues Oracle's commitment
to CRM innovation.
These applications include: Oracle Self-Service E-Billing on Demand,
Oracle Sales Library, Oracle CRM on Demand Deal Management, Oracle
CRM on Demand Enterprise Disaster Recovery and Oracle AIA integration
from Oracle CRM on Demand to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne.
Interactive
statements, advanced analytics and PCI DSS Level 1 certification helps
Oracle Self-Service E-Billing on Demand customers increase loyalty, accelerate
payment collection and reduce costs.
Oracle's Senior Vice President of CRM, Anthony Lye said Oracle Sales Library
is a single repository of an organization's sales materials that helps
improve collaboration within and among sales teams, while increasing close
rates.
Sales reps can quickly and easily create targeted and effective presentations,
as well as access, preview and download slidesor an entire presentationto
find relevant content. A rich set of social networking tools enables users
to share, rate, review and tag slides so that everyone in an organization
can leverage the most effective sales materials.
He noted that Oracle CRM on Demand Deal Management empowers the sales
force to negotiate deals more effectively and maximize profitability.
With a highly intuitive user interface, Deal Management features new deal
scoring and price recommendation support; advanced what-if modeling and
market information; and customer purchase history features, that can translate
to maximized revenues and margins, more effective price negotiations and
accelerated deal closures for customers.
By providing annual disaster simulation, guaranteed recovery point objective
and real-time database synchronization, Oracle CRM on Demand Enterprise
Disaster Recovery users can be confident that risk mitigation, business
continuity and compliance and regulatory processes are in place at any
critical moment.
Oracle AIA integration from Oracle CRM On Demand to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne
now introduces complete lead-to-quote and order business processes for
JD EnterpriseOne 8.12 customers, as well as real-time synchronization,
user interface integration into quotes and orders and data integration
of accounts, contacts and products.
By implementing this new integration or extending existing JD Edwards
EnterpriseOne investments to deliver CRM when needed and maintaining a
single view of the customer, organizations can improve customer satisfaction
with more accurate, timely ordering, close deals more quickly with complete
opportunity to quote and order process and save time and reduce business
risk with productized integration.
According to Lye, “These latest products are exemplary and demonstrate
how Oracle innovates to deliver an unrivalled, complete CRM experience
for maximum business value and benefits. Only Oracle can combine the resources,
experience and vision to offer organizations across the board with the
flexibility and options that positively impact business results at every
customer touchpoint.”
Microsoft
Explains Changes To SQL Data Services
Microsoft has expanded on
the details of its strategy for SQL Data Services, which was first
announced in February.
ZDNet reports that the next stage of the plan will be to “accelerate
the delivery of core relational database features as part of SDS [SQL
Data Services]”, according to a posting on the Microsoft SQL
Data Services team blog.
These features will include high availability, fault tolerance, easy
provisioning, pay-as-you-grow scaling and consistency of data. Microsoft's
SDS team also said it wanted to ensure the online database system
included true relational capabilities and compatibility with existing
development and management tools.
SDS, which was formerly known as SQL Server Data Services, is
part of Microsoft's
Azure Services platform. It sits on top of the Azure operating system,
which is currently under development. Microsoft said SDS will be running
as the mid-tier layers of its Azure cloud services, and the company considers
SDS to be the strategic database component.
“The universal feedback we received from our partners and other
early adopters was the need for a relational database delivered as a service,”
Microsoft senior program manager David Robinson wrote in the team blog.
“This was extremely valuable feedback and drove us to more aggressively
investigate ways in which we could deliver these features. As a result
of that work, and based on the progress we've since made in the product
team, we are announcing that SDS will deliver full relational database
capabilities as a service.”
The result will be that the first version of SDS will have feature support
that will ensure database applications just work, Robinson added, and
developers will be able to use the same code base for both in-house and
online usage of the database.
Another new feature is the addition of Tabular Data Support with support
for tables, stored procedures, triggers, indexes and Visual Studio, among
other features.
The revamped SDS will be out in public in a test-build form by mid-2009
and available commercially in the second half of this year, according
to Microsoft.
