And the winner for The Top IT Server Spender goes to...Financial Services

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According to a recent Gartner analyst report by Kiyomi Yamada the Banking, Insurance and  Capital Market industries spend more than any other industry. So how much did they spend, a whapping 13 billion dollars. What a turn of events over the past 10 years. If it was 1995 a server really wouldn't be taken seriously, the spending would go to the mainframe to add more processing.

So why the change? Well there are many factors. The most obvious is the increased speed and robustness of the "open systems" server. Especially, in the Intel arena and with Microsoft partnering with High Performance Computing (HPC) vendors provides additional credibility.

There are other forces at work here, there are business drivers, increased competition for other FI's and regulatory challenges. The largest problem with this is that to solve these problems is very complex:

  • It involves many systems to integrate
  • There are security issues. Since FI's want to expose this functionality to both internally and external customers Mainframe security is a challenge
  • User Experience and I'm not talking to about making it pretty but making solutions usable and productive user interfaces.
  • Regulatory bodies require fast turnaround of addressing compliance issues. It is very difficult to do this in a Mainframe environment.

These are just a few, but think about how increase complex when we also have an environment in which FI's acquire each other and duplicate their entire environment. Business planning and architecture become increase important. It's not about just the technology capabilities but how it can be leveraged.

You may wonder which industries where next in line. Well it was telecommunications and government. However these were distant contenders with telecommunications only spending 7 billion.