ABS.SPO

2012: ABS Submission

The St. Petersburg company CSBI Group at the CNews conference in the fall of 2012 presented a free ABS. Its code will be provided to customers free of charge, and money will be charged for implementation and support.

At the conference "Bank Informatization: New Solutions to Old Problems," organized by CNews Conferences and CNews Analytics, the development of Russia's first automated banking system based on free software was announced, and the opinion was expressed that open source is the next step in the development of ABS.

According to Valery Bashkatov, director of the Progress CSBI Group Competence Center, developer and apologist of the new solution, the entire system code will be opened, no licensing will be required.

Compared to the proprietary model for the development and implementation of ABS, the SPO has a number of advantages, Bashkatov believes. This is an opportunity to reduce costs during the first stages of implementation; absence of rigid binding to the software vendor; access to source codes and the possibility of self-improvement. In addition, the free ABS, according to the developers, is safer.

The main advantage of introducing such a system for the bank is, of course, cheapness. "Now banks depend on ABS manufacturers and are forced to pay for each revision, for each customer, for each new user. In light of the upcoming turbulence, the cheapening of the system will be beneficial to customers, "says Valery Bashkatov.

The statement about the invasion of the SPO into the banking industry caused far from unambiguous responses among the expert's colleagues. Of course, first of all, the question arose about what the manufacturer of a freely distributed system would make money on. "A free program is not completely free," Bashkatov replied. "We will earn on implementation and support."

The new solution will be built on the basis of the main product of CSBI Group "Banker Pro" and will include all the main working modules. Security will be provided by the means of the original proprietary product, the developer also expects that his image, the guarantees provided, a high level of technical support will play a role. In addition, some experienced ABS developers have already expressed a desire to participate in the development of a new system.

CSBI Group of Companies has registered an automated open source banking system - ABS.SPO - with the Federal Intellectual Property Service (Rospatent). Certificate of State Registration No. 2012661447 dated December 14, 2012.

"We would like our banking products to receive new development vectors. We strive to create a new segment in the market - an open source banking information system. Now we have created such a system and intend to create a community of developers that will participate in its development. For its part, CSBI Group will carry out basic actions to support this system and ensure its compliance with the requirements of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation. We would like mid-level banks, which we primarily focus on bringing a new solution to the market, to strive to work in this system and develop it together with us, "says Alexey Makeenkov

ABS.SPO is the first full-fledged open-source banking system in Russia that automates the entire range of modern banking services and meets the requirements of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation.

The product "ABS.SPO" is based on the OpenEdge platform of Progress Software Corporation. "ABS.SPO" is written in the OpenEdge ABL programming language.

Speaking about the advantages that the use of "ABS.SPO" gives banks, the executive director of the CSBI Center for Banking Technologies Denis Galatsevich noted the lack of dependence on the software developer, a reduction in the cost of automating banking operations, the possibility of self-improvement of the software. In addition, the use of an open source product allows you to quickly respond to the emerging needs of system users.

CSBI Group sees its role in the development of ABS.SPO primarily in creating a community of software developers for the development of the open source banking system, as well as training banking software developers and certification of banking software implementation and maintenance specialists. Also developing ABS.SPO, the company intends to initiate, moderate and regulate the processes of changing the open source banking system and making changes to the basic, supported by CSBI Group, branch of the system.

The development infrastructure of ABS.SPO, according to representatives of CSBI Group, includes a single storage of the system source code, a version control system, a library of documentation for the system, both user and developers. In addition, components such as a bug tracker, a forum for communication between community members and a notification system for important events will be developed.