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February 03, 2006
Disrupting banks with LAMP
One of the most interesting things I took away from last week's conference "Open Source meets business" was from a session on how a business department from a large German bank is using the LAMP stack to build internal applications themselves.
Normally, the IT world in financial institutions is strictly defined by the "IT department" on the one side and the "business department" on the other. The business folks define what it is they want and hand off the specs to the IT department who then implement the application. Obviously there is a divide between both departments and discussions rage as to whether the required functions are necessary and whether the predicted IT costs are in fact correct. I'll spare you the details.
In the session, the current IT world of this bank was described as being split into three distinct areas. Office solutions (Excel macros etc.) in the lower third. Mainframe and J2EE applications in the upper third and applications built on LAMP in the middle third (mid-range applications).
The interesting fact being that the business folks are driving the applications built on the LAMP stack. In this particular case, the 'suits' define what it is they want and get resources that then implement the solution for them, practically bypassing the IT department. The argument being that the LAMP stack allows for rapid application development and a more agile approach to the whole development process.
Interesting times ahead.
Posted by Matthew at February 3, 2006 09:08 PM