Misys plc, the application software and services company, announces a new strategic alliance with Microsoft Corp. This new initiative builds on last year’s mission-critical applications development alliance and will deliver Misys’ banking and capital markets applications via the Windows Azure cloud platform. The technical collaboration with Microsoft, announced at Sibos 2010 in Amsterdam, will provide financial institutions with the choice and flexibility they need to maximise the return on their IT investment and deliver innovative services to their customers more rapidly.
Today at Sibos, Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft, released the following comments on the significance of this collaboration to the industry, via video.
Financial institutions typically depend on a multitude of applications and systems that are integrated with customers, partners and external financial networks. Running these applications requires complex data centre and support structures that are expensive to operate. Cloud computing, and specifically Windows Azure, enables banks to move from a capital intensive cost model to one which is based on the consumption of technology. No longer will banks need to over-order computing resources because the scale of the Azure platform allows high volume workloads such as end-of-day processing to be consumed on demand.
Misys and Microsoft have successfully deployed instances of the Misys BankFusion Universal Banking solution to the Windows Azure platform. The Misys solution is built on state-of-the-art BankFusion technology, which adheres to a rigorous set of standards but is unconstrained by proprietary infrastructure, which makes it possible to run the solution in the cloud. Both companies have received significant interest from banks looking to reduce complexity and operational risks by running their banking systems in the cloud.
“The combination of BankFusion, the most advanced financial services platform on the market today, and the innovative Windows Azure cloud computing infrastructure is world-beating,” said Al-Noor Ramji, EVP and General Manager, Misys. “New banking solutions must reduce operational costs. By making our solutions available in the cloud, we are enabling our clients to benefit from increased agility with lower TCO and risk, while simultaneously providing them with unprecedented speed and flexibility with access to the latest solutions. The initiative lets banks concentrate once again on the business of banking.”
The collaboration between Microsoft and Misys demonstrates that the financial services industry is now moving to the next generation of banking platforms. Many financial institutions already run finished services in the cloud such as Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Office and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online solutions. This news extends the Microsoft cloud capability to banking applications.
D.C.