Grand Theft Auto and Zero Tolerance

  by Richard Muirhead | 12 Jun 2008 | Permalink |

SIFMA, day two. What have I learned? The Grand Theft Auto network incorporates the Cisco Nexus 7000. Operational features preventing human error-like blinking port lights to guide cable swaps are key.

What does this have to do with SIFMA? We all know how incredibly intense the world of banking has become. Partly due to mounting competition, partly due to existing or planned regulatory compliance, a tad down to cost constraints, a big spadeful to do with mounting product complexity and market diversity and some (I hope at least a little) due to a contrite sense of obligation to the rest of the world to do a “better job” in the wake of the credit crisis. I hope.

So this bit of the Cisco briefing this morning was not news. Neither is the blissful state that application development and operations teams in financial services have been operating within. What do I mean by that? The business wants to deploy an app…well that will be 90 days for an existing app or five or six months for a new one. And as Doug Gourlay, who runs marketing for Cisco’s Data Center Solutions practice noted, the killer, underlying issue is how do you orchestrate mutli-admin collaboration across server deployment, app server configuration, database tuning, storage provisioning, security auditing, HVAC installation, cabling and the rest of the gubbins that goes into making an application happen!

Today also saw some good nuggets of information from both the speakers and exhibitors. We heard that the economy is going to hell in a hand basket – but Wall Street firms are continuing to invest in IT, particularly risk technology. At least according to an IBM and Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) survey. The 500 or so Wall Street IT professionals and technology vendors who participated in the study noted that even though we’ve seen billion dollar write-downs and thousands of staff cuts, technology spending is the one area that will be spared from considerable cost-cutting.

Another theme we heard repeatedly: IT projects have to show ROI in a year. To which I say can you really afford to wait one year? Wouldn’t one quarter be better?