Monday, June 04, 2018
Over the past 50 years, the ATM has evolved from being a simple, single purpose cash dispensing device to become a high-profile and mission critical delivery channel for financial services. Every hour of every day, millions of consumers around the world depend on ATMs. Through the years, the humble cash dispenser has changed in virtually every way to arrive at its present form. But even after all the rapid growth, technological progress and social transformation, the ATM channel is more dynamic than ever
At the 2018 ATMIA USA conference in Las Vegas, I heard several senior industry resources say that they have never seen as much change taking place within the ATM channel as they see today. The Next Generation ATM initiative sponsored by ATMIA is a direct response to the increasing rate of change and the need to make fundamental changes in order to ensure that the ATM channel remains relevant and profitable.
One of the most significant improvement that can be made in the way organizations test their ATMs is through virtualization. Most financial service providers have already made significant investments in virtualizing their IT infrastructure and for good reason – it makes sense. Virtualization provides several key benefits that can and should be extended to the ATM channel:
Taking Virtualization to the Next Level
Moving to a virtualized environment for ATM testing provides a platform for building additional capabilities. Here at Paragon, our VirtualATM® solution has been developed to provide clients with several unique benefits:
The Only Constant is Change
Despite all the growth and success over the past 50 years, the ATM industry is currently under siege. Significant efforts are underway to replace cash and mobile everything will continue to drive consumer behavior. Additionally, the US ATM marketplace is near or at the saturation point. This means less growth, lower margins and more competition. Speed and efficiency will be key to survival over the next few years.
ATM security will continue to be an issue on several fronts. From a cybersecurity perspective, ATMs continue to be vulnerable to certain types of hacks and attacks, especially when they are not running the most current version of OS or protective mechanisms. Complete, accurate and timely testing are keys to avoiding the front-page news.
And who could forget the looming migration to Windows 10. This is going to be a painful exercise and lot of work for little forward motion. It is definitely not too early to start planning now for this looming event. A good way to start making forward progress towards Windows 10 would be to inventory and virtualize all your Windows 7 machines.
The good news is that you are not defenseless and there is a much better way to test ATMs than what we had 50 years ago. VirtualATM is a part of Paragon’s comprehensive suite of Next Generation testing applications that are designed specifically to help our clients in the financial services community deal with the ever-increasing rate of change. Built on our server-based Web FASTest architecture, VirtualATM is a testing platform that can help your organization deal with change more quickly, completely and cost effectively so that you can be successful for another 50 years.