Service Landscape 3.0 to support a common standard for financial IT systems

BIAN releases standardised map of business functions across banking sector

Frankfurt, 8 April 2014 — BIAN, the Banking Industry Architecture Network, has today unveiled a new release of their industry standard framework containing over 180 business scenarios for banks. Developed by BIAN’s international network of leading banks, banking software developers and service providers, Service Landscape 3.0 is designed to bring the banking industry closer to a standardised banking IT systems landscape.

As an independent not-for-profit organisation, BIAN has pinpointed a total of 280 unique Business Capabilities (called Service Domains) to date. In addition, Service Landscape 3.0 identifies how these Service Domains interact in business scenarios. Based on their industry experience, BIAN members, including SAP, UBS, Credit Suisse and IBM, have collaborated to introduce over 100 new business scenarios into its reference structure, including back-office, trade finance and sales.

Ultimately, a comprehensive BIAN Service Landscape will enable banks to cut IT infrastructure complexity and integration costs. BIAN’s goal is to encourage banks to rely on a service-oriented architecture (SOA) that separates pre-defined services into core IT building blocks and identifies the necessary links between them. The aim is to implement this on an industry and world-wide scale to enable banks to develop innovative technology offerings without battling through aging or tangled enterprise architecture and suffering the IT outages to which this can lead.

Based on a single repository in modelling tool MagicDraw, Service Landscape 3.0 represents a significant landmark for BIAN, as members will be given access to a complete Unified Modelling Language (UML) model of the BIAN Service Landscape. For non-BIAN members an HTML version, free of charge, is available.

Alongside identifying key building blocks of banking functions, BIAN has released how-to guides to accompany Service Landscape 3.0. Aimed at audiences including technical architects, BIAN members and other financial institutions, the guides detail the theory and design practices behind the BIAN Service Landscape, the tools and templates used to capture content and directions for applying the BIAN Standard.

BIAN is hosting a webinar on Tuesday April 15 2014. Taking place at 3pm (CEST), the hour-long demo will explain how banks can embrace BIAN’s Service Landscape. Viewers can sign-up here for the free webinar.

Hans Tesselaar, executive director of BIAN commented: “Today represents a significant landmark for BIAN — with over 100 new business scenarios built into the Service Landscape, the network has drilled down to bank-specific capabilities, which will ultimately support the industry to adopt a standard IT infrastructure model.

“Soaring banking technology costs are holding financial institutions back from providing the best possible service to their customers and making updates complex, time-consuming, risky and costly.

“Implementing the BIAN standard will encourage greater business efficiency across banks, so that they can compete in the areas that really matter — namely providing a great service to customers.”

About BIAN
Established in 2008, the Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) is an independent, member owned, not-for-profit association to establish and promote a common architectural framework for banking interoperability issues. BIAN’s goal is to define SOA and semantic definitions for IT services in the banking industry. The community focuses on creating a standard semantic banking services landscape, while ensuring consistent service definitions, levels of detail and boundaries. This will help banks to achieve a reduction of integration costs and use the advantages of a service-oriented architecture.

Financial institutions, software vendors, and system integrators, along with technology partners, are invited to join the association and play a collaborative role with other industry leaders in defining, building and implementing next-generation banking platforms.

BIAN Members: ABN AMRO, Achmea, Allshare, Asseco Group, Axxiome, Banco Galicia, Bangkok Bank, Capital Banking Solutions, CGI, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Commercial Bank of Qatar, COREtransform, Credit Suisse, DBS, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Postbank, Erste Group, EVRY, FERNBACH, HCL, IBM, IDRBT, ifb group, , Infosys, ING, innobis AG, KfW Bankengruppe, Microsoft, Nucleus Software, PNC Financial Services Group, Rabobank, SAP, SCI Tanzania, , Singapore Management University, Société Générale, Sopra Banking Software, SunGard, SWIFT, TCS Bancs, Temenos, UBS, UniCredit Group,.