Reports by Computer Weekly suggest that the bank will cut its software development costs by up to 90%, equal to billions of pounds worth of savings, but the plan will also bring many other benefits.
Barclays plans to introduce a Linux system, which removes the need to pay a license fee such as those needed to use a Microsoft or Oracle system, while its new, secure internal cloud system will mean that new applications are written once, deployed quicker and services can be integrated across different parts of the bank.
An example of this has been Barclays Pingit application, through which businesses can receive financial transactions.
Speaking to Computer Weekly, a spokesman for the bank said: “Through the open development model we use many low-cost servers strung together, rather than one very big and very expensive machine, which also makes our systems much more resilient.
“Overall this means we can cut the cost of developing new software and applications by up to 90% and design services more closely around our customers’ needs.
“Our deployment speed for updates is 12 times faster than the old systems which would have required us to re-write from scratch.”
However, the spokesman added that this move wasn’t a snub to current suppliers.
“We are not snubbing any supplier, but making big improvements to our own technology platforms, which allow us to reduce costs and develop services more rapidly,” he said.
