The biggest difference between the banking industry and the Internet industry in IT construction is that what the banking industry considers is not technical capabilities, nor the quantity and quality of talents, but the time point and demand when starting construction.

In the last century, the banking industry had money and accurate business needs. The most important thing was that business changes were slow and demand risks were low. There were no open source products such as Hadoop in the industry, and even IBM itself did not have a Unix server.

The only choice for the banking industry was mainframes. In addition, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Tenten, etc. at that time were not as good as IBM, so the banking industry naturally chose IBM mainframes.

The difference between mainframes and supercomputers is that supercomputers focus all digital technology on trying to solve a single problem, while all the computing power of mainframes is used to execute billions of small tasks. affairs. IBM mainframe is known as "the most powerful transaction system in the cloud computing era". It dominates the "non-x86" host market, accounting for about 75% of the market share, processing more than 30 billion transactions every day, surpassing Google of daily searches.

For example: IBM z14 has 32TB of memory, can process 12 billion transactions per day on a single system, runs Java workloads 50% faster than x86, and can execute 1,000 concurrent NoSQL databases.

Compared with the new generation z15 and z14: the number of processor cores increased from 170 to 190, single-thread performance increased by 14%, maximum system processing power increased by 25%, memory increased by 25%, compression throughput The capacity is increased by 17 times, and the I/O channels are increased by 20%. The launch of Z15 also allows IBM to get rid of the difficulties of the past few quarters.

Today, IBM mainframes handle 87% of all credit card transactions, and 29 billion ATM transactions and 4 billion passenger flight reservations are processed through IBM's mainframes each year. What’s even more amazing is that 68% of the world’s production workloads run on IBM mainframes. IBM is not as simple as building a mainframe.

In addition to relying on IBM's mainframe, the banking industry also has a huge dependence on the IOE (IBM, Oracle, EMC) framework.

For example: China Merchants Bank can actually switch the core business of the head office from Shenzhen to Shanghai in a few minutes. It uses IBM's i series, its own DB2 database, its own middleware, and its own Access package, comes with email support. TIMI's design allows modern hackers to use all kinds of tricks.

IOE provides all "basic software" other than applications, including operating systems, middleware, databases, etc., and the source codes of these "basic software" will not be disclosed to the outside world. Many businesses are developed based on them. The IOE framework is leading in terms of stand-alone performance, security, stability, scalability, reliability and high-availability architecture. The banking industry is conservative and it is difficult to break away from IOE.

Banks do not have this technology, just like airlines do not build their own aircraft, because their aircraft are also bought, and it will take more than 10 years to replace them. The only way the banking industry wants to go to IOE is that there is a new business demand, and even the systems used by internal personnel start to be established in the environment of going to IOE. Only then can the high-rise buildings built by IOE be slowly eroded. If you open a new bank now and ask BAT experts to get such a set of things, and go to IOE by the way, the cost is not necessarily lower than using IOE. To sum up,

The banking industry has always used IBM, which has a lot to do with the time when IBM appeared. It is difficult for other similar products, including x86, to achieve the excellence of the IOE framework. Decades of in-depth cultivation of the IOE framework, coupled with the complexity of the bank's business processes. Even if banks have a slogan of going away from IOE, they only dare to make small-scale attempts.

The above is just my personal opinion. Criticisms and corrections are welcome.

From the perspective of design goals, IBM's Z series mainframes, which are widely used by banks, are designed with zero downtime, and their iteration speed is slower than the Power series, which targets enterprise core applications.

The x86 architecture we commonly use has been oriented to desktops since its inception, and then to servers. Its stability is relatively poor, and blue screens are very common.

The Z series, from CPU to server system to software to services, are all IBM products. They meet the requirements of zero downtime as a whole, and there is no push-over from multiple suppliers like common software and hardware. Bullshit.

Most of the domestic systems are based on open source software or based on a collection of multiple open source software. There are very few that can be completely self-developed. The software and hardware design is a collection of multiple companies. There is no such thing as BAT. Before strong internal development capabilities, hundreds of domestic banks could only use IBM's mature products.

Because of "safety".

Do you understand what I mean? Especially core technology.

What does it mean to go to IOE?

These are the names of three IT giants, I=IBM, O=Oracle, and E=EMC. The functions of their products can be seen in the following table:

IOE provides all "basic software" other than applications, including operating systems, middleware, databases, etc. The source code of these "basic software" is generally not public.

Of course, applications still need to be developed by bankers themselves. The most powerful ICBC has a development team of several thousand people.

Then why aren’t banks like Alibaba? Is it impossible?

Not really.

1. Banks must be stable. Once a risk occurs, who will bear the responsibility? No one is willing

2. Who is willing to give up the interests behind the procurement? No willingness

3. Talents are not strong enough, well, this is a more realistic problem

4. Domestic products are still not up to par

If you open a new one now A bank can be built by BAT experts and can go to IOE, but it requires a huge investment of manpower and material resources, and the cost is not necessarily lower than using IOE.

Old banks are exploring how to go to IOE, but there is no urgent need, just to reduce costs and explore new technologies. And technically speaking, it is impossible for the core system to completely go to IOE within 10 years.

The biggest difference in IT construction between the Internet and the banking industry is: not technical capabilities, nor the quantity and quality of talents, but the different time points and needs for starting construction.

I had dinner with an IBM software salesperson (non-Greater China) a few months ago. He expressed concerns about the prospects of IBM’s software sales in China. Then he added: "IBM is now more powerful in China." The security business is high-end servers, which are expensive but have good stability. The data volume of the major banks is currently only supported by IBM's high-end functions, and it is unlikely that Chinese competitors will have this technology. ”

As the company gets bigger, any government will want to get involved. This is helpless. Killing the enemy first is what the US government wants to do to Huawei, and the Chinese government is doing to Google, McKinsey and IBM. This is a very normal diplomatic method.

It is a fact that Chinese IT companies cannot compete with others. Protectionism is not necessary. Just look at the small countries in Southeast Asia and you will know that state-owned monopolies do not seek development at all and are inefficient. I hope Chinese companies can calm down and focus on technology. IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle employ so many scientists and spend billions of dollars on research and development every quarter. This is worth learning from.

I will remain anonymous because of my interests.

What IBM provides is not a single product, but a systematic solution, including servers, operating systems, databases and application systems. The earlier a bank's core system is established, the more dependent it is on IBM. In the early days, there were no alternative solutions, but there were many new bank options. The banking system is a relatively closed industry, and it also requires high stability. The cost of capital and time required for localization replacement are very large, and it requires the cooperation of banks and large manufacturers to handle it. Of course, most of our large banks They are all state-owned assets. We hope that national policies can guide them appropriately and speed up the process.

The bank’s systems are all from 30 years ago, so they are all American Oracle systems.

Banks are reluctant to change their systems because bank leaders are afraid of taking responsibility. All top leaders of the bank hope to be stable and error-free, and not to seek merit but to have no faults. This is why the banking system has lagged behind and has not changed its system for decades.

There are currently two systems in the world, one is the American Oracle database system, and the other is the cloud system developed by Alibaba. The Alibaba cloud system is definitely far better than Oracle's old minicomputer system. Because the American Oracle company has been leaking secrets this year, Chinese banks are afraid and dare not continue to use the American Oracle system.

In the field of mainframes produced by IBM, that is, the mainframe field, there is currently no competitor of the same level in the world. Mainframes are characterized by high stability and high-speed computing. This is far from the computing power of minicomputers or x86. The stacking method can be realized, and the core is realized by different system architectures. In this field, IBM is the only giant in the world. In the field of quantum computers, IBM is also the leading developer and has prototypes on display. The minicomputer is sold to Inspur and the x86 is sold to Lenovo. This is because profits are weak and IBM needs to focus on high-end computing.

If IBM is blackmailed by the US government and banned from use on national grounds, will our banking system be paralyzed?

Do you know about computer information management in universities? There is something called a decision-making system. It seems that Chinese programmers are not good at this. In addition, there is a risk control in the bank, and it seems that programmers are not good at this either. According to my experience in file management, this system requires all banking, statistics and computer programs. It feels a bit like artificial intelligence. It seems that there are almost no such all-round talents in China. It is impossible to create such a software, so ever There is a ready-made one, and I will never go through this complicated software by myself.

Now it is undergoing localization transformation. IBM will eliminate it in four to five years at most. Now new banks no longer use IBM, such as Ant.