While right now it's not as widespread as its proponents would like, knowing what underlies this technology and what the business issues are could save your organisation large quantities of money. And that's got to be desirable. Possessing its own private network remains the jewel in the crown of big banks and other large organisations that need to shift large volumes of data around the world. They own or lease dedicated communication lines throughout the world, allowing them to move electronic money, and information, without ever losing central control. The problem is that private networks aren't cheap.
Private networks give big banks or large corporations a competitive edge.
It can also be a profit centre, since third parties are willing to pay to get their fund transfers onto such a private network, with its defined service levels. But that's all set to change. What the Internet did bring was standardisation of protocols, such as IP that anyone could use whether or not they used the Internet as a transport mechanism. This means that anyone can have a cost-effective private network without the high startup costs. Private networks are expensive to set up because of the cost of the infrastructure.