Banking software product and services firm Polaris Software Lab will launch a cloud offering for mid-sized Indian banks next quarter that would somewhat rival TCS? ?Bank-in-a-box.?
Polaris? software as a service (SaaS) platform would offer banking products on a pay-as-you-grow model that would take out the high costs of product licensing for smaller banks. Licensing a bank solution can cost more than $1 million. Polaris has developed cloud solutions for retail banking, credit card, lending, private banking, asset management and brokerage, among others. The solutions are being piloted with two banks currently. Banks would be billed on a transaction or account-based model. The brokerage solution, for instance, can be charged on a per trade basis and lending on a per account basis. Core banking may be charged on a per branch basis.
?We are putting the whole structure together and we will be launching it in the next 60 days. The pricing will be competitive,? founder, chairman & CEO of Polaris Software Arun Jain said.
Although the cloud platform would target the Indian market now, the solution will be taken to the Saarc countries, Africa and West Asia thereafter. ?Tier I banks will look at capex investments.
Tier II and tier III banks are looking at opex. The solution is for mid-sized banks or foreign banks who want to come to India,? Jain said. One of the pilots is being done with an international customer looking at operations in India. ?
Cloud services, delivered over the Internet, is an on-demand paradigm that can disrupt the way IT services are delivered today.
Cloud computing uses virtualisation technologies and can potentially make an enterprise shed all of its IT assets one day ? servers, storage, and applications can all be rented as per need from cloud service providers. The CEO noted that by 2015, the company would target at least 10% of its business from SaaS. For the quarter ended December 31, the firm?s revenues jumped 18% over the year-ago period to Rs. 399.90 crore, buoyed by product sales. TCS is selling what it calls ‘Bank-in-a-box’ to smaller cooperative and rural banks for a monthly rental fee for every branch. The firm is also on the verge on launching the biggest cloud offering for SMEs of six verticals ? manufacturing, Retail, Professional services, Wellness, Education and Textiles.
While public cloud offerings may be slow to take off, KPMG found that 68% of respondents in a ?India Cloud Survey? indicated that they plan to adopt a cloud service model. Significant more number of SMEs, nearly 80% plan to adopt SaaS as compared to larger organizations.