Barclays To Save ‘Billions’ With Own Cloud And Open Source

Barclays bank has managed to cut its IT expenses by 90 percent after moving infrastructure into a purpose-built cloud, claims The Sunday Times.

Another measure that helped the bank cut costs was the adoption of Linux OS.

According to the newspaper, COO for retail and business banking Shaygan Kheradpir is rolling out the new system, which shuns traditional vendors in favour of open source solutions, across various departments of the bank, and he expects to save Barclays billions.

Mind on the money

According to paper, Barclays saved  90 percent of its IT budget by avoiding products from Microsoft, Google, Oracle and SAP. The non-traditional infrastructure has also helped the bank cut down mobile app development time dramatically, and release its PingIt mobile service in seven months instead of two years.

“Both Microsoft and Oracle have long made money from arcane charging models on their operating systems,” commented Tristan Rogers, CEO of collaboration software company ConcretePlatform.

“In modern browser based web development, the use of Windows on your server, for example, is pretty redundant, yet many companies still pay substantial royalties to Microsoft for the privilege. Then there are the SQL and Oracle database costs.

“This move to purpose built cloud ditches MS and Oracle operating systems, and I believe this is where Barclay’s saves its money. This money can then be re-purposed for application development.”

Barclays has often led the way in technology adoption among the high street banks. It was the first to introduce ‘contactless’ (NFC) debit cards, and late last year it told TechWeekEurope it plans to give a number of its branch staff iPads in an effort to improve customer experience and reduce waiting times.

How well do you know open-source software? Take our quiz!