Like Oracle, which is also pitching heavily for the banking sector, SAP is basing its hopes on the move by banking institutions to adopt standard software as they replace legacy systems with modern services-based alternatives. Although SAP and Oracle applications are used extensively by banks, often it is their generic offerings not the their core banking software. Both are relatively new players in the core banking area but Oracle managed a jump on SAP through its i-Flex investment.
SunGard, with its 25,000 customers, which it says include 15 of the top 50 financial services organizations, is the largest player in the sector. It has committed to use SAP’s business process platform to deploy its BancWare risk and performance-management application and jointly develop applications for the financial services sector. The first offering will be an asset liability management solution. This is the first step in what we hope will become a fruitful partnership between SAP and SunGard, said Harold Finders, division CEO of SunGard’s Financial Systems business.
SunGard CEO Chris Conde said the value for banking institutions will come through the ability to automate integration and achieve native access to financial databases, for better visibility, analytics, and risk assessment. He said the partnership also helps introduce SOA to the banking environment in the practical way while also being aimed at helping control compliance-related costs by tapping into SOA. By using the SOA approach embedded within the joint developments to allow native database access, Conde also believes banks can avoid many of the problems of multiple interfaces and data duplication.
SunGard believes the number of enterprise infrastructure players will decrease over the next few years, but that SAP will remain a force and this played a part in its decision to collaborate. We think it will have a profound impact on the financial services industry, said Conde.
