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Netcentric Computing: What Does It Mean for Banking?

We're now a little into Year One for Internet banking. Late last year, a few banks fielded significant Internet services, and more are planning to take the plunge in the next few quarters. Internet banking means letting customers access their accounts over the Internet. That's a big leap from remote on-line services over telephone lines or private networks, because it means securing customer files against predatory hackers and crackers who are generally presumed to roam the Internet. Keep in mind that these early ventures in cyberbanking are the daring doings of innovators who are paving the way for early adopters--likely years ahead of any mass movement to the new medium by most U.S. banks. Still, it's useful to look ahead. Even incremental changes at the smallest banks take many months of planning. In the, case of going Internet, it also means acculturating your bank's staff and your customers to new ways of banking. Giants humbled. What action, then, do we see on the historic stage? A battle of giants. Maybe the end of the era of giants. We see IBM--which dominated the era of mainframe computing and nearly became extinct in the current era of PCs--now claiming that technological evolution has made it perfectly fit to flourish in the new era. Chairman Lou Gerstner calls the technology of the new era "network-centric," meaning that computing resources are in the network, not individual computers. Sharing the historic stage is Microsoft, which dominates the PC era through proprietary software. Pundits claim that it's almost impossible for a company to dominate two successive eras--a pretentious way of saying that Microsoft will have a lot of adjusting to do if it wants to make it big in the netcentric era. Recent strategy briefings by Bill Gates make it clear that Microsoft has reversed its earlier leaning toward offering proprietary products via its own private network and now plans to make the Internet the central element in all its offerings. Similarly, Intuit, lord of the personal-financial-software market, has recently moved to use the Internet as a customer interface for netcentric banking and portfolio-management services. In contrast with proprietary network, the Internet is "open." Nobody owns it. Anyone who observes its published protocols can use it. Or design products for it. The cheap, global connectivity of the Internet offers many advantages over proprietary private networks. …