SAP AG has said that members of the Industry Value Network (IVN) for banks, which brings together SAP, banks and non-banks to collaboratively develop solutions for the banking industry have formed an expanded definition group to co-innovate and create global standards for enterprise Service-Oriented Architecture (enterprise SOA). The expansion of the community enables the members to leverage the results from the IVN for their custom projects as well as to directly influence the development of software solutions for the banking industry. As part of expanding the scope of its charter, the community has opened its membership to include additional banks and non-banks, including software providers, service providers and auditors. With this announcement, the members of the community and SAP continue to deliver on their mission to provide a common innovation backbone for the banking industry, be it global retail banks, private banks or corporate banks.
The community definition group for banking currently has 37 members with more than 130 individual participants engaged in 23 work groups defining services, discussing architecture topics and creating building blocks to help companies make a successful transition to enterprise SOA. In addition, the community has created an SOA taxonomy, developed a service landscape and identified the strategic and organisation building blocks that banks require for a successful transition to enterprise SOA. Participants engaged in the expanded community include, among others: Callatay & Wouters, Commerzbank, CSC, Deloitte Consulting, FinanzIT, Hewlett Packard, HSH Nordbank, La Caixa, PricewaterhouseCoopers AG Wirtschaftsprufungsgesellschaft, SPSS, StreamServe, Syskoplan AG, SWIFT and TXS Financial Products.
Recognising that it is paramount to have customers and suppliers agree upon specific services definitions, SAP and a group of nine banking customers launched this initiative in December 2005. Participants included ABN AMRO, Absa, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), Credit Suisse, Deutsche Postbank, ING, Intesa Sanpaolo, Nordea and Standard Bank. Since the commencement, the group has met significant milestones and has jointly identified more than 180 critical enterprise services, which SAP and other partners have committed to implement.
ING joined the industry value network for banks because its management believes that a standardised environment can significantly reduce IT costs for banks.
"Integration issues make the business case for buying software, especially in larger organisations," said Johan Smessaert, head of enterprise architecture, ING. "Collaboration in defining services via the industry value network for banks should help reduce integration and new solution adoption costs. With its strong experience in standardising solution development, SAP uses these services definitions to reduce customer integration costs. SAP can also take an active role to promote ecosystem collaboration on a common services layer for the banking industry."
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