Branch Automation Project Was Ahead of Its Time (1992)

In May 1989, Citibank initiated a major effort to develop a workstation-based distributed systems architecture (DSA) that would serve as the foundation for the bank's extensive branch systems. The project's objectives were ambitious--the replacement of disparate branch systems with a single, consistent system infrastructure to quicken new product lead times and the introduction of intuitive look-and-feel technology designed to differentiate the bank's services from those of other institutions. The project ultimately was cancelled due to economic constraints, and the bank is exploring other branch technology platforms, some of which are currently under development. In some areas of the bank, such as global finance, distributed systems architectures are currently being implemented, according to Michael Westerman, head of architectures for national systems and technology in Citibank's corporate technology office. Westerman helped review the request for proposals during the DSA platform selection process. Although DSA was cancelled, the scope of the project raised some points for banks to consider in planning branch automation initiatives now and in the future. Historical perspective. In mid-1989, a meeting was convened in San Francisco to discuss the future of retail branch banking. Attending the meeting were senior Citibank officers from a variety of disciplines, including marketing, branch operations, product development, and systems. The meeting first helped define the need for a more flexible system infrastructure, one that could adapt quickly to technology and business changes likely to take place in the next decade. Second, it stressed the need for new banking products with a more consistent set of consumer interfaces that would promote a nationwide branding of Citibank services. DSA was to be the first step toward developing that infrastructure. The changes in technology and business requirements that Citibank envisioned are worth examining more closely. Technology developments continue to drive the cost of computer and communications systems down, while increasing the performance characteristics of these systems. Computer workstations today, for example, are built with increased computing power and storage capacity at the same or lower cost than existing systems. Likewise, the functionality and performance of telecommunications networks and systems continue to improve and are increasingly available at a lower cost than in the past. Business requirements, too, can change quickly, as bank competitors introduce new products, regulatory requirements change, and new product ideas are defined internally. The ability to deliver products and solutions quickly in such an environment is imperative, and Citibank's proposed infrastructure needed to be able to incorporate new products quickly. These factors resulted in the formation of the DSA project in 1990. The purpose was to demonstrate to Citibank management how recent advances in technology, particularly in the area of distributed, workstation-based client/server systems could be applied to the consumer banking business. Client/server computing involves running bank applications from branch-based minicomputers or workstations to which personal computers are attached for use by bank personnel. An open system. Sun Microsystems workstations and servers and the Tuxedo Transaction Management System from Unix System Laboratories were chosen as the hardware and software platforms on which DSA would be developed. Furthermore, it was felt that branch-based applications running on workstations better promoted the development of modular, object-oriented application programs. Such programs interact with each other by transferring messages back and forth. More importantly, message-based programs can be distributed across multiple computers without modification. This technology provided the potential for achieving cost savings compared with traditional mainframe computing. …