Press Releases

March 13, 2007

BANKS MUST EXERCISE CAUTION WHEN CONSIDERING VISTA ATM MIGRATION FOR ATMS, WARNS LEVEL FOUR

Long before the official launch this month, Microsoft has been touting the substantial benefits that businesses will achieve with Windows Vista. For ATM deployers however, the transition from IBM’s OS/2 system is still a recent and in some cases ongoing challenge, forcing them to question the benefits of yet another systems overhaul. The original move to Windows NT/XP was the catalyst for creating an open standards ATM environment, offering banks greater possibilities to separate the proprietary relationship between ATM hardware and software and pursue a multi-vendor policy. The migration to Windows has been complex and many are still experiencing availability issues, often as a result of software quality problems. Whilst there will inevitably be pressure to migrate, ATM deployers need to carefully weigh up the risks and benefits of being an early adopter of Vista. What should banks consider before migrating?

Martin Macmillan, Business Development Director at Level Four, a leading supplier of open standards-based ATM software (www.levelfour.com), discusses the caution that ATM deployers must exercise in their approach to Microsoft’s latest operating system:

“It cannot be ignored that a transition from the Windows XP operating system to Windows Vista is a natural evolution that ATM deployers will eventually implement. Indeed, Vista offers the promise of greater security and stability and will provide banks with the opportunity to further enhance customer service delivery at the ATM. However, banks must exercise caution in their approach to Vista at such an early stage in the operating system’s lifecycle.

“Due to the inherent need to continually update Windows and with a higher amount of applications now resident on the ATM itself, deploying a Windows-based ATM network already entails a step-change in complexity when compared with an OS/2-based system. Automated testing solutions that exhaustively check the ATM software must be used to address potential faults before any changes to the application or to the operating system (for example security updates) are deployed. Banks have already undertaken rigorous testing on their current Windows platform, now predominantly XP, to improve its stability to control ATMs. While Vista is still in its infancy, it lacks the maturity and improved reliability that XP now offers for the control of a mission-critical banking device.

“ATM deployers are justifiably reluctant to upgrade at a time when XP has sufficient functionality and Vista offers uncertain advantages. They will benefit from resisting the urge to migrate and allow early adopters to test Vista and see it proven in the self-service field. For mission-critical banking devices such as ATMs, banks should adopt a wait and see policy before considering a migration project of this magnitude.”

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For more information or to arrange an interview with Martin Macmillan, please contact Nicola Truman or Alexandra Kedward on 0207 608 2500 or levelfour@hotwirepr.com .



About Level Four
Level Four’s development and testing products have been built to address the needs of ATM deployers seeking to maximize their investment in the ATM channel.

BRIDGE:test is targeted at banks and ATM deployers who are running, or seeking to run, a modern ATM network based on the industry-wide CEN/XFS open standard.  BRIDGE:test provides an enterprise regression test platform to test CEN/XFS based applications in a controlled environment. Customers gain benefits of the breadth of testing and improved quality assurance as well as reduced time to market due to increased testing efficiencies.

ATM Developer is targeted at banks and ATM deployers who are running states & screens protocol controlled applications such as those based on NDC or 912. ATM Developer provide a graphical environment in which customers can maintain the configuration file from creation to validation.

Since 1995, Level Four has built an impressive global customer base of banks and payments processors including, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB, Bank of America, CIBC, VocaLink and Standard Bank of South Africa. Headquartered in Dunfermline, Scotland, Level Four has offices in Dubai and Charlotte, NC, USA. http://www.levelfour.com  

Level Four’s online ATM industry resource: www.atmindustryinfo.com 

For more information, please contact:
Nicola Koronka
Hotwire
+44 (0) 20 7608 4673
levelfour 'at' hotwirepr.com





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