5 ms·

That thought did occur to me as well but, in taking the article at face value it's most certainly some core aspect of their banking systems at the very least...

That thought did occur to me as well but, in taking the article at face value it's most certainly some core aspect of their banking systems at the very least... If they are intent on replacing the mainframe then, imo, MongoDB would be a bad choice but who knows... the new, challenger banks don't use mainframes.

refset 6y ago
Any ideas what some of the challenger banks are using? I've not seen any examples beyond Nubank (~$10B valuation), who have bet big with Datomic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYuToviSx5Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYuToviSx5Q Also: https://www.datomic.com/nubanks-story.html https://www.datomic.com/nubanks-story.html
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  Oracle has a banking platform that they mostly only succeed in selling to smaller banks. I don't know if that would count as "challenger" though.
- _Understated_ 6y ago
  Not sure exactly but any job ads I've seen for the likes of Monzo and Starling talk about backend engineers that have a deep knowledge of CI/CD and you don't do that on a mainframe. Also, Monzo are heavy users of Kubernetes, so again, no mainframe. [0][1] Starling use AWS and GCP [2] In addition, the cost of entry of a mainframe system is a high bar when you can spin up a server on Azure in seconds and deploy code to it in a handful more seconds and then scale it to the heavens in yet just a few more seconds... all for less than the hourly cost of the IBM salesman. I've yet to see any jobs that mention mainframes, Cobol or the like. [0] - https://monzo.com/blog/2016/09/19/building-a-modern-bank-backend https://monzo.com/blog/2016/09/19/building-a-modern-bank-bac... [1] - https://www.8bitmen.com/an-insight-into-the-backend-infrastructure-of-a-modern-digital-bank-monzo-architecture/ https://www.8bitmen.com/an-insight-into-the-backend-infrastr... [2] - https://blog.container-solutions.com/starling-how-to-build-a-bank-in-a-year https://blog.container-solutions.com/starling-how-to-build-a...
  - AmericanChopper 6y ago
    > Not sure exactly but any job ads I've seen for the likes of Monzo and Starling talk about backend engineers that have a deep knowledge of CI/CD and you don't do that on a mainframe. The part of the bank that handles core processing is going to be a very small portion of their engineering team. Kube and DevOps ads don’t provide any hints about how much they might rely on DB2, COBOL, etc...
AmericanChopper 6y ago
The article gave me the impression it might have been for some sort of CRM-like system. I don't know if it would be even possible to replace DB2 with Mongo, the consistency guarantees are too weak. Banks are accountable to the central bank in every jurisdiction in which they operate, I wouldn't see them getting that past one single central bank, let alone 60+ of them.

refset 6y ago

Any ideas what some of the challenger banks are using? I've not seen any examples beyond Nubank (~$10B valuation), who have bet big with Datomic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYuToviSx5Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYuToviSx5Q Also: https://www.datomic.com/nubanks-story.html https://www.datomic.com/nubanks-story.html

AmericanChopper 6y ago
Oracle has a banking platform that they mostly only succeed in selling to smaller banks. I don't know if that would count as "challenger" though.
_Understated_ 6y ago
Not sure exactly but any job ads I've seen for the likes of Monzo and Starling talk about backend engineers that have a deep knowledge of CI/CD and you don't do that on a mainframe. Also, Monzo are heavy users of Kubernetes, so again, no mainframe. [0][1] Starling use AWS and GCP [2] In addition, the cost of entry of a mainframe system is a high bar when you can spin up a server on Azure in seconds and deploy code to it in a handful more seconds and then scale it to the heavens in yet just a few more seconds... all for less than the hourly cost of the IBM salesman. I've yet to see any jobs that mention mainframes, Cobol or the like. [0] - https://monzo.com/blog/2016/09/19/building-a-modern-bank-backend https://monzo.com/blog/2016/09/19/building-a-modern-bank-bac... [1] - https://www.8bitmen.com/an-insight-into-the-backend-infrastructure-of-a-modern-digital-bank-monzo-architecture/ https://www.8bitmen.com/an-insight-into-the-backend-infrastr... [2] - https://blog.container-solutions.com/starling-how-to-build-a-bank-in-a-year https://blog.container-solutions.com/starling-how-to-build-a...
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  > Not sure exactly but any job ads I've seen for the likes of Monzo and Starling talk about backend engineers that have a deep knowledge of CI/CD and you don't do that on a mainframe. The part of the bank that handles core processing is going to be a very small portion of their engineering team. Kube and DevOps ads don’t provide any hints about how much they might rely on DB2, COBOL, etc...

AmericanChopper 6y ago

The article gave me the impression it might have been for some sort of CRM-like system. I don't know if it would be even possible to replace DB2 with Mongo, the consistency guarantees are too weak. Banks are accountable to the central bank in every jurisdiction in which they operate, I wouldn't see them getting that past one single central bank, let alone 60+ of them.