New Way of Working

by the hardware manufacturer – or alternatively, a third party, writing service providers for specific hardware. While there are no XFS4 service providers available for production use today, manufacturers are actively working on implementing them.

The KAL-sponsored open source SP-Dev Framework simplifies implementing service providers, Patterson said. “The .NET-based framework runs on many platforms, and it’s already been demonstrated running services providers on Linux platforms including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and ‘Raspbian’ Linux on inexpensive RaspberryPi hardware.”

Once XFS4 service providers become available on Linux hardware, it will be possible to create native client applications that take advantage of the flexibility and cost advantages of Linux systems. Client applications can be written using all of the native technologies on Linux. Also, different versions of Linux (distributions) can be picked to support different levels of hardware, including small inexpensive systems or even resource-constrained legacy systems. Customers can pick a Linux distribution with a price that matches their needs, Patterson said – though KAL recommends a fully-supported version such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

XFS4 also supports cloud based environments. This opens up new architectures for ATMs, with distributed client applications running in the cloud that connect to user-facing ATMs. The ATM can run on low-powered hardware with a small footprint version of Linux, or even on a firmware-powered machine without an operating system. This obviously minimizes the cost of implementing and maintaining ATMs.“The application can take full advantage of the power and cost savings possible with the cloud,” Patterson said.

Existing applications will need to be rewritten to work with XFS4 service providers, Patterson said. KAL’s Kalignite Platform can help with this, since it will transparently support both XFS3 and XFS4 service providers. “Bigger changes will obviously require more work, but with bigger advantages. For example, creating a purely ‘cloud native’ application using XFS4 service providers might require a major rewrite or a completely new application.”

In addition to adopting technologies used in mobile application development, some banks are also looking to adopt a way of working that is common among mobile development teams. Called DevOps, it involves bringing together development and IT operations teams with the aim of shortening development cycles and more quickly reacting to customer needs. A large Czech Republic bank credits a combination of a DevOps model and multi-vendor software from KAL with its ability to deliver more frequent innovation. Where the bank previously did one or two ATM software releases a year, it now does them every four to six weeks. The bank has introduced contactless transactions, offers instant payments at ATMs,