Microsoft News Tracker

Last week Microsoft took the opportunity of the 28th Annual Bank Administration Institute (BAI) Retail Delivery Conference & Expo Nov. 15-18 in Orlando to tout the benefits of their “experience Banking” initiative that they announced a year ago at the same conference. Basically the press releases (1, 2, 3, 4) mostly served to recount the successes of Microsoft partners selling the usual Microsoft products to the retail banking industry which seems to be what “experience Banking” is all about. There’s nothing wrong with that - while banking is called out as one of Microsoft’s vertical foci, it’s in the sense of special handling as opposed to special products.

The first press release linked above, however, did have some new items, albeit in the same vein:

Microsoft “Motion”

Microsoft today announced the availability of a new services offering, code-named “Motion.” “Motion” is a tool to help financial institutions quickly and easily map their core business capabilities and requirements into a services-oriented architecture. More information about “Motion” is available by sending e-mail to motion@microsoft.com.

Branch Office Infrastructure Solution

The BOIS provides conceptual information to help facilitate the definition and deployment of a streamlined branch office infrastructure solution that provides a comprehensive set of core IT infrastructure services. The BOIS helps banks facilitate an infrastructure based on the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system. The deliverables include prescriptive guidelines for implementing a complete, lab-validated, single-server solution for the branch office using automated deployment tools. The automation tools are part of this offer and are configurable for individual branch office deployments. Additional information is available at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/branch/default.mspx.

The first is interesting because we have not heard much about Microsoft Services lately. The reason is well expressed in link 4 above by the managing director of U.S banking for Microsoft’s Financial Services Group, Warren Lewis: “Microsoft has no plans to compete with banks or our industry partners.”