Author: Adedeji Olowe

Adedeji / a bunch of bananas ate a monkey /

Core banking software in Nigeria as of 2011

It wasn’t long ago that Nigeria had a gazillion banks but one and half banking consolidations later, we are down to about 24. By the time the other half of the new consolidation is concluded, we might be left with about 15 or so but until then fingers are crossed. While the banks that survived the regulatory apocalypse might be interesting to purveyors of merger and consolidation services, the core software that these banks use tickle my curiosity.

BankWebsiteSoftware
Access Bankwww.accessbankplc.comFLEXCUBE
Afribankwww.afribank.comGlobus
BankPHBwww.bankphb.comT24
Citibankwww.citigroup.com/nigeriaFLEXCUBE
Diamond Bankwww.diamondbank.comFLEXCUBE
Ecobankwww.ecobank.comFLEXCUBE
Equitorial Trust Bankwww.equitorialtrustbank.comGlobus
Fidelity Bankwww.fidelitybankplc.comFinacle
First Bank of Nigeriawww.firstbanknigeria.comFinacle
First City Monument Bankwww.firstcitygroup.comFinacle
FinBankwww.finbank.com.ngFinacle
Guaranty Trust Bankwww.gtbank.comBasis
Intercontinental Bankwww.intercontinentalbankplc.comFLEXCUBE
Oceanic Bankwww.oceanicbanknigeria.comFinacle
Skye Bankwww.skyebankng.comFLEXCUBE
Spring Bankwww.springbankplc.comFinacle
Stanbic IBTC Bankwww.ibtc.comEquinox
Standard Chartered Bankwww.standardchartered.com/ngeBBS
Sterling Bankwww.sterlingbankng.comBanks
Union Bankwww.unionbankng.comFLEXCUBE
United Bank for Africawww.ubagroup.comFinacle
Unity Bankwww.unitybankng.comBanks
Wema Bankwww.wemabank.comGlobus G10*
Zenith Bankwww.zenithbank.comPhoenix

*Notes:

  • Stanbic IBTC is concluding its migration to Finacle which goes live on July 1, 2011
  • Wema Bank has started a project to migrate to Finacle and should be concluded within a year

The software Lineup

Now (2011)Next year (2012)
  • Finacle – 7 (29%)
  • FLEXCUBE – 7 (29%)
  • Globus/T24 – 4 (17%)
  • Basis/Banks – 3 (13%)
  • eBBS – 1(4%)
  • Equinox – 1 (4%)
  • Phoenix – 1 (4%)
  • Finacle – 9 (38%)
  • FLEXCUBE – 7 (29%)
  • Basis/Banks – 3 (13%
  • Globus/T24 – 3 (13%)
  • eBBS 1 (4%)
  • Phoenix – 1 (4%)

Finacle is a complete suite of banking application from Infosys, one of the largest technology companies in India.

FLEXCUBE is from Oracle Financial Services. FLEXCUBE was initially i-Flex software but the company was bought by Oracle in 2005 during one of its famous spending sprees. A bit of history: FLEXCUBE was originally developed by Citibank and was spurned off as Citicorp Information Technologies Industries Limited, an independent company. FLEXCUBE is highly regarded globally with about 700 installations in 125 countries and has won Core Banking Solution of the Year and Application of the Year from The Banker.

Equinox is a rich functional universal banking solution from the Neptune Software Plc. of UK with has about 60 installations across the world.

Globus is the older version of T24. Both Globus and T24 are from Temenos of Switzerland. Before the consolidation, Globus had 15 installations in some of the biggest banks in Nigeria but has since lost ground during the 2004/5 banking consolidation to Finacle.

Basis and Banks are from ICS Financial Services, a midsize Jordanian/UK software company with about 45 installations worldwide.

Despite the fact that the Nigerian market is dominated by 2 major software from India, the core banking software business is rich and varied worldwide. To read more about other banking systems, head over to http://www.inntron.co.th/corebank.html.

Will Amazon eat Google's lunch?

There has been a lot of news lately in the Android camp and they have ranged from the good to the bad. Nothing ugly yet.

Let’s start with the bad. Google was forced to come out to defend its decision not to open up the Honeycomb version of the hugely successful Android mobile OS immediately. It said it needed to make some things work properly before device makers start to play with the release. Previously Google has been heavily criticized for being hypocritical since it was the ring leader of those who like to bash the Apple ecosystem as closed and then evil. The rebuttal by Andy Rubin placated only few nonetheless seems everyone would need to keep fingers crossed until Honeycomb comes out.

And the good news? Amazon jumps into the Android pond. The splashes would definitely make quite a lot of people wet.

Prior to now Google was the only software heavy weight in the Android zone with many calling it an 800 pound gorilla. One of the criticisms of the Android experience has been the mess of the official Android market place and the risk of the openness of apps submission. It got so bad that Google had to use the kill switch to nix some rouge applications siphoning users’ data. Now apart from the 1984 styled intervention, Google hasn’t done much to change this. And then Amazon steps in.

Everyone welcomed Amazon’s entry into the apps store business and despite the Apple lawsuit against the use of the apps store name; it has been a roaring success. It is not rocket science, Amazon has extensive experience with retail business and it has done well with it; you can feel this with the ease of using the Amazon apps store.

Some said Google should be happy that Amazon is validating Android but I think Google should be scared: Wouldn’t it be stupid to think that Amazon, who started as a book seller in 1995, would be content with selling just apps? Amazon moved from selling books to selling everything including hardware. Today, Amazon is the largest seller of retail cloud system and has the bestselling reader, Kindle. Kindle has been an explosive success, considering that it can’t do anything apart from e-books (more or less). So what if Amazon starts to sell tablets? That shouldn’t be a problem, I guess.

But Amazon is not like a Samsung or HTC, it can force Google’s hands. And if Google doesn’t play ball, what stops Amazon from creating a fork of the Android and going in another direction? That is the scariest possibility and it is based on the fact that Amazon has skills that Google doesn’t have; customer service. With good customer babysitting, you can be sure than an Android experience from Amazon is almost going to floor any other approach and even if Google goes on with the big 4 manufacturers, HTC, Samsung, Motorola and LG, Amazon forging alliance with the small time players would definitely hurt the other parties.

The market for sub $100 smartphones is going to be terribly huge; and with customer service for phones not like free email service, Google might find itself as the loser. And because Android is “open” there is absolutely nothing Google can do about it.

Samsung's Central Station wireless monitor

Samsung is up to some pretty neat stuffs these days. Apart from the incredible Galaxy series of phones and tablets, they just released a wireless monitor for the European market. Yeah, you got me right, a wireless monitor.

It shouldn’t be a big deal but I wonder why it hasn’t become mainstream. Look at it, 30 years after the PC came to a street near you, we still string monitors to the CPUs (not counting the all in ones though). If I could stream movies over 4g, why can’t monitors go wireless as standard?

Same questions still come to my mind when I think of the perenial measly 1.3 mega pixel cameras on laptops and keyboards that don’t glow in the dark. But then, who knows?

Read more here: http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/19/samsungs-central-station-wireless-monitor-appears-in-europe-as/

Laptops, why they all stay the same

Apart from the processor war of attrition between Intel and AMD, it seems every OEM has abandoned the laptop market to jump into the tablet war zone.

Every iPad[2] wannabe touts some very decent specs: As of February 2011 dual core Tegra 2/Qualcomm SnapDragon with 1Gb RAM is standard.

But for the laptops? Safe for stuffing new chips inside and changing the color of the casing, nothing new is happening. Dell tried the Adamo super-thin and ultra-sexy line some months back but that offering has been suspended. Lenovo has some neat tricks of its own but nothing mainstream enough to change the direction of the game for everyone.

How come that the same 1.3 Megapixel camera is still standard on laptops since Father Christmas started riding reindeers? Why can’t we have HD cameras as standard? What happened to keypads that glow slightly in the dark? Why can’t we have dual cameras on laptops too – front and back facing with capabilities to record HD. I don’t see them as something to carry around but with video conferencing on wifi, it looks like something nice to have. Multi-touch pad is also a way to go. Too bad that Windows 7 can’t use that trick for now.

But with everyone fixated on the tablets like ants doing laps around sugar, I might have to wait a wee bit longer

CDMA, going going gone?

The last few days have seen some rumblings in the telecoms sector in Nigeria. News (234Next | Thisday | Business Day) had it that Telkom is thinking of pulling out of Multilinks, a CDMA operator, or has even left (depends on who you ask) because its investment has gone down the flush bowl.

That wasn’t news to me because they started a loser’s game right from the word go. Defensive or “me too” investment is always a tragedy for any organization because it shows an obvious lack of strategic direction.

But that is for Multilinks.

Starcomms, the largest CDMA operator also pawned about 80% of its base stations to Swap Tech to offset the giganormous debt on their balance sheet.

These two stories don’t really mean much, businesses always run into trouble everywhere in the world, until everyone started saying CDMA business is bad in Nigeria. CDMA operators in Nigeria are having a tough time but the technology is not to blame. In North America, some of the largest operators use CDMA and are pretty successful. That GSM is the global dominant mobile standard points more to the strategy behind its introduction and less to the technology itself.

From my own experience there are some major faults with the CDMA operators in Nigeria that is hastily dragging them to their death.

  • One, they lack strategic directions. Considering that CDMA operators came before the GSM telcos, is their current debacle not surprising? Prior to the advent of GSM, the CDMA operators preferred to sell to the “elites”. Few had more than 30,000 lines on their switches. It was the age of mobile for the “big man”. Then GSM came, the flood gate was opened and CDMA has been playing catch up ever since
  • Two, the CDMA operators restricts customers only to the phones that they provide. And usually these are very dumb ugly phones sold for exorbitant prices. So nobody wants to use them and those who do don’t use them as their main contact phones.
  • Three, phones aside, CDMA operators lacked features and service offerings. No blackberry, you can hardly browse on your phone, etc. But then the phones were basic so even if you could, the phone wouldn’t help matters anyway. Check out their websites and see the very lame products and service offerings
  • Four, when the GSM pulled right beyond them, they went into overdrive and started competing on cost. That was the last nail. After that everything just spiraled out of control.

Telecom is a volume business and unless you have a pretty good idea of what to draw in the crowd, you can’t compete. When Visafone was launched, it was a collection of different networks and with innovative marketing, leapfrogged to the fore quickly.

Vodacom (50% owned by Telkom then) had a chance to play in the GSM space in Nigeria but curiously, their boards played it away and the opportunity passed. But to show how crazy things could be, 8 years later they paid $280M to acquire Multilinks in Nigeria. Of course, the owners were ready to bail out of a losing market then and were more than happy to sell. Even despite paying top dollars, their strategy for turnaround was at best, facing the wrong direction. Today, the rest is history.

Consolidation of the telecoms market is a reality in every country. Maybe this is our time to shed the losers.