A profound shift has taken place in financial services, where the winners and losers of digital banking will be decided by how they leverage a wider ecosystem of partners across new and existing assets. Those in the lead already show the advantages of heterogenous thinking. The industry must adopt a collaborative mindset in order to maximize the value of a partnership.

The paths to modernization will differ, and most institutions will adopt strategies which work best for their current and long-term end state. Appetites for new modernization options, like cloud-native deployment, will also be dependent on regulatory environments or risk appetite. In this environment, vendor providers differentiate based on the strength of the ecosystem which they bring to the table. Broadening the ecosystem means more options for solving specific needs.

There are many different providers working to modernize layers of the ecosystem. These products represent a wide range of bank needs while working to provide capabilities which include many deployment models and accommodate for modernization in a hybrid fashion. Here institutions are gaining the advantages of modernized mainframe while still proactively engaging in cloud.

The role of the ecosystem will be a critical part of an institution’s digital transformation strategy. Banks must look for a vendor partner which is able to provide value through a broader range of partners. We spoke to nine different vendors across systems of record, data management, customer engagement, and integration to find out exactly how they are operating in this envrionemnt. This report contains into trends affecting the move from on-prem to cloud, views into how potential ecosystem partners are going to market, and key lessons learned for the future.

Vendors Mentioned: Zafin, Temenos, Backbase, SunTec, Fiorano, MongoDB, Fujitsu, Technisys, Intellect, Red Hat, IBM