Month: September 2011

1. PRESS RELEASES:

• Allevo solution for MFIs in Finextra
• Allevo Remittances solution in Finextra

• Allevo solution for MFIs in Bobsguide
• Allevo Remittances solution in Bobsguide

2. DAILY SPECIFIC SIBOS PUBLICATIONS:

 

 

• Sibos Issues – Preview/Monday edition (Allevo’s ad on page 25)
• Sibos Issues – Tuesday edition (Allevo’s ad on page 15)
• Sibos Issues – Wednesday edition (Allevo’s ad on page 13)

3. SIBOS DISTRIBUTED PUBLICATIONS:

FINANCE ON WINDOWS – MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY IN BANKING, CAPITAL MARKETS AND INSURANCE

Find us:

• on the sponsors list, in ‘PARTNERS’, page 7
• among Sibos exhibitors, in ‘SIBOS 2011 Event Preview’, page 30 (Allevo’s GM quote)
• case study, ‘IN PRACTICE Payments Processing’, page 63 (Musoni microfinance)

4.ADVERTISEMENT in IBS Journal

 

 

5. JOINT RELEASES with MICROSOFT

 

Most depressing day is packing day, wherever you are and whatever you do. And it feels like this today, even though us Allevoers are still looking forward to a full day of fun and relaxation at Niagara Falls.

There weren’t too many people looming around the Sibos floor, most of them being exhibitors taking care of final preparations, exchanging giveaways and saying goodbyes in a less formal environment than the previous days.

In my past “Goodbye, Vienna/Hong Kong/Amsterdam” posts I used to say see you all next year in whatever city was bound to be the next host for Sibos. The sad news is that we’re not 100% sure we plan on going to Osaka, given all rumors going around radiation levels from media reports. Romanians have had their share with Cernobîl and, even though it happened about the time I was born, people are still talking about it to this day, blaming it for several diseases they or their relatives are facing.

Thus, we have a profound understanding of the hard times and high risks our Japanese partners are confronting and unless there’s a change of plan, we may only return at Sibos in 2013, in Dubai, and skip 2012 for good. But, if we get to Sibos next year we’re looking forward to coping with the Japanese people, knowing they won’t let us down with organizing an outstanding event. Sadly we don’t have too many words of praise for this year’s venue. The Sibos party was far better than that of last year, but that’s about it in terms of organization.

 

 

For the time being, please take a look at the day to day photo gallery we’ve uploaded on our website this past week.

That’s all folks, thank you for reading us, for dropping by and for showing interest in our solutions!

By: Ioana Guiman

 

 

When I heard the bells ringing calling people for the closing plenary it struck me: this was it. Weird feeling when you’re still living in the hyper Sibos rhythm. Everyone today was saying goodbyes, running a few last minute meetings, hunting down freebies and giveaways (our wine seemed to be highly appreciated, as have none left!), talking about the Sibos party and flights back home.

Good Sibos all in all; our most requested demos were our solutions for the corporation to bank space and biometric identity. Also, visitors were interested in what we know and cand do for remittances & MFIs.

Thursday was a full day of back to back meetings for all of us, some very interesting and promising. Another “good Sibos” tick added to Allevo’s history. Many visitors dropped by unexpectedly, following the previous day’s community session on open source. I found it surprising that so many people showed interest in this techy and weird idea; stay tuned to hear more about it from us in the next few months!

 

Take a look on our website at the dedicated Sibos 2011 section for more details and information on our presence there.

To celebrate the happy end, the Allevo team opened the 5 o’clock bottles of wine and invited passers by to join us for a toast and for announcing the last three winners of the daily draw.

Now everyone can ditch the tie, leave all stress behind and head towards the long expected Sibos party!!!

By: Ioana Guiman

 

We’re still here enjoying the Indian summer of Toronto, which would of course be even more pleasant from the outside, rather than from within the MTCC, but that’s another story.

Today was the big day – we hosted our “Financial interoperability and open source” community session moderated by Mrs Rodica Tuchila, Senior Advisor ARB (Romanian Banks Association).

We have put together a distinguished panel, bringing a complete range of opinions to the audience:

Rodica Tuchila, Senior Advisor, RBA (Romanian Banks Association)

Adriana Tanasoiu, CEO Depozitarul Central (Romanian CSD)

Laurentiu Andrei, Deputy General Manager, State Treasury and Public Debt Directorate, Romanian Ministry of Public Finance

Armin Gerhardt, CEO Efis

Corina Mihalache, Business Analyst, Allevo

After hearing the perspective of business customers and regulators, Corina Mihalache presented the vendor’s point of view. She started by defining interoperability as the ability of diverse systems and organizations to work together.

“Interoperability can only be achieved by an industry capable and willing to combine technology standards and innovation. This practical mix of standards and innovation will only succeed when delivered with business practices that are based on a balance of cooperation and competition.”

Craig Burton in Doc Searls’s A conversation with Craig Burton about business prospects for Linux

The financial industry confronts with drastic cuts and it still must keep pace with technology, it still needs resilient and performing systems, but most solutions are natively proprietary, thus very hard to be adapted outside of their scope. Also, the fact that payments have already become commodity is starting to be accepted by more and more people by the day.

We strongly believe that an open source platform will lead to the commoditization of the entire processing layer. And this can also be read as achieving interoperability in the financial world. This is the key message of Corina’s speech.

 

The modern day concept of Open Source is not a new idea at all, it’s been here for quite some time now. And it is not an unknown concept to banks either. In March 2011 Banca della Svizzera Italiana (BSI Bank) in Ticino, Switzerland chose to go open source, selecting the Magnolia (Basel, Switzerland) CMS as the backbone of its communication platform.

Why not make full benefit of it in the transaction processing layer as well?

 

Are we completely off track?

After the session, someone from the audience dropped by our booth and asked us something that translates to both “What an excellent idea, but are you out of your mind?”. Mmm, yes we might be. The whole purpose of this approach is to create an interactive space which will drive innovation both in the community of developers of financial applications and in the way financial institutions evaluate and purchase software. With open source a whole new perspective unfolds. Adopters can rely on:

– components reusability, lower ownership, maintenance & support cost

– usage of a practice proven stable product optimized for financial transactions processing

– ensure end to end interoperability & conformity with the EIF provisions

– growth potential due to rich expertise mixture.

More details about this session and the presentation itself are available in the Allevo Session page on our website or inside our Virtual Sibos booth (go check it out if registered on mysibos.com).  If interested to find out more about this initiative please do not hesitate to contact any of us.

The 5 pm gig finished up with happy faces and smiles from our fine wine tasters and with a new set of winners of today’s draw:

By: Ioana Guiman

 

Halfway through Sibos and it feels that only yesterday we were registering everyone and picking up the stand location and planning demos and events.

C111 stand fuss

Day wrap-up is as follows: a few of us (such as myself) were punished to guard the stand, take care of all scheduled meetings and try keep up with all visitors, running demos one after the other; a true canter which brought a lot of new connections, confidence, business opportunities and ideas . It didn’t seem an eternity until the Allevo 5 o’clock wine tasting session, which was big help in getting back to the right pulse. People came back after Monday’s experience and others joined happily to exchange a few words over a glass of refreshing wine. Unfortunately we were not able to bring the traditional Halewood Romania Private Reserve wine we’ve brought every year at Sibos, because of the local alcohol monopoly. But we managed to find a work-around and served some local Canadian wine.

Round-table debate on open source

But today’s highlight actually happened first thing in the morning: the round-table debate on open source, a by-invitation-only session organized by Allevo in an attempt to try find common grounds for forming a community interested in adopting the open source concept in the financial industry. It seems that the initiative was very well received and people were responsive and interested in this subject. Open source in the financial transactions processing niche would drastically change the way things are currently going and, since several players already fancy the idea, chances are it will quickly be adopted and sustained.

 

 

Afterwards we had the big “after-party”, snacks and a few drinks in a room with both access from the MTCC and from the outside. The diversity of the invitees was thus larger than that of Sibos, bringing in people from Toronto who haven’t registered for Sibos, but who were interested in what was happening there. “Super networking opportunity” was among the feedback we received.

We were happy to select and announce the next set of three lucky winners of our daily draw. Two more days to go; drop your business card at our booth for a chance to win.

Stay tuned for more on Allevo at Sibos tomorrow night (or morning, depending on when and where from you’re reading us).

By: Ioana Guiman

 The Sibos spirit

We all know that time flies, but I simply can’t believe how fast it has this time around! We’ve just put an end to the first day of Sibos 2011 and there are only 3 days left which will pass by in an instant. This is my 4^th Sibos in a row, both as visitor and exhibitor.By now I already learned what to expect from the hectic Sibos week- or so I think. Nevertheless, you can never be too prepared for such an event; Sibos never seizes to surprise you and you can never be too prepared for it.

For instance I was sure this year’s venue was going to be far below that of 2010 in terms of visitor flow, demo requests, relevant meetings and overall attendance. That’s what everyone thought, given the fact that events outside Europe are known to be less attractive to key participants everyone is hunting for. After only one day, it proves that our worst fears were not met: plenty of visitors walked down the MTCC’s halls, jumping from conference to session to meeting, checking out product demos, searching among the latest solutions vendors are showing off with, making new contacts and soon.

The Allevo 5 o’clock wine

Our 5 o’clock, well, not tea, but wine got lots of friends & partners inside our small booth. I don’t think our stand has ever looked smaller; but just looking across the hall to our exquisite stand neighbors (Bank of America Merrill Lynch,Deutsche Bank, ING, RBS, Standard Chartered, Tata Consultancy Services, Wells Fargo and SWIFT itself at the other end of the hall) made us feel like being part of the Champions League. Adding plenty of people sipping their glass of wine made it feel like there was no space left to move. However the 5 o’clock wine seemed to be well received by people searching for a moment of respiro after a long day. We are going to organize this over the following days as well, 5 pm sharp, so please drop by if you have 10 minutes to spare in your busy agenda at the end of the day.

The Allevo daily draw

Everyday three icons hand-painted on glass are awarded to the luckiest three visitors who drop their business card at Allevo. Today’s happy winners are from Finextra, Bank Central Asia and Innopay. Say a prayer every morning in front of it is absolutely optional ;-).

Allevo on show

One thing we learned is that if you plan to make a statement on the exhibition floor, you have to permanently come up with something new. Thus this year, our latest product pitches comprise solutions for:

banks

corporations

public administrations

service bureaus

the open source community

biometric identification

Ok, maybe the first 4 are on everybody’s lips,but open source? Yes, open source. Why not in the financial processing systems’ world as well? If interested to hear more about this concept, we expect you Wednesday 9:30 Community Room 3 to attend our “Financial interoperability and open source” community session moderated by Mrs. Rodica Tuchila from ARB (Romanian Banks Association).

We also expect all our Sibos readers tomorrow morning, Tuesday Sept 20^th, in room 201D, for the exclusive “Round-table debate on open source” session organized by Allevo. The purpose of this session is putting the base to an open source community in order to catalyze the transactions processing commoditization. All guests are welcome at the after-party. We’re organizing a cocktail reception for all session attendees, same place, all afternoon long. So, if you read this blog post, you’re more than welcome to come!