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This presents an interesting view on the impact of a customer-first approach to developing applications, and the level of success that can be achieved measurably in business growth. 

Whilst we’re not privy to detail of what was delivered, it demonstrates the customer activity improvements which will drive revenue. Although in this case the external customer was the recipient of design thinking, this approach can just as easily be applied to any internal users, who often deal with multiple apps - most of which were designed where ease of use was an afterthought. Worse, these apps were designed limited to a silo of activity, a number of which need to be manually orchestrated to enable a single business action, with the human being the workflow engine.

Where design thinking plays its role is to force us back to thinking of what the user is trying to achieve. This goal may be very different than simply bringing the workflow back inside the technology as quite often this workflow will have evolved from its manual days. Tied to an agile iterative process, design thinking, itself iteratively aligned, provides for a much more efficient interaction between user and the services provided by the technology. It also yields significant productivity improvements internally and client attraction externally. Either way, that's bottom line impact.

Underpinning this process, an open source toolkit combined with the right methodology can support the idea to implementation continuous delivery model. Ultimately, it’s all about matching the delivered efficiencies with those of the process that will get you there, efficiently.

Oh, yes - ping pong with the CEO will really change the culture!  Its not April 1st still is it? Typical "googlization" getting the wrong end of the stick.  Its really about inspiration, motivation, collaboration, flattening out the organization and hiring the right people, why mention college grads, on what basis do you think thats the right person? work circumstances, yes open areas, eye sight contact, lots of whiteboards help, but heavy corporate process will not work.  Didn't mention open, agile, flexible, collaborative - just xbox's and ping pong.  American corporate management at its best as usual (sadly)

Many have already bought iPads/iPhones and probably won't change horses easily - many companies dropped their resistance to iPhones and I know of others where they provide support to iPads, so the horse may have bolted, especially in senior management. As we are all aware financial firms are becoming engaged in a war around the mobile device, and the standard mantra is "develop for iOS first, then Android, then maybe...."

The big question is whether IT really has any control over the direction at all, the long rearguard action on Windows and Blackberries has not won them any more fans in a lot of firms - and they don't have that many to start with!

You seem to have control over your choices, as I do, but the vast majority don't, but quite honestly the array of tools out there make keeping synch across multiple platforms no really an issue, and with more of the available solutions becoming cloud enabled (certainly externally and private clouds are now growing) is the platform as important as it was?

Be that as it may, I think you have to consider the fact that most of the financial industry has only just started the move to Windows 7 after taking 2 years to get those plans going.  Its likely they will continue down the Windows 7 path for the rest of this year into next, and then assume the same latency on Windows 8 - so we are talking 2014-15 before you see any mass.  So the benefits of a Windows 8 ecosystem is going to be staccato.

Agree with Paul Caplin.

Regardless of whether "one rules all" in banking, something I don't believe can happen - too many firms have senior managers using mobile platforms from non-MS ecosystems - there are two changes that mean the idea that "closed" approaches like WPF, and Silverlight can survive, is flawed:

1. The days that enterprise technology drove the market, and everything was fine as long as it was a windows PC, are over, its the consumer/personal market, and its likely not to be a windows based PC, probably not even a windows based anything.  This means a variety of evolving platforms need to be coped with.  Developing for each platform is not sustainable, but the expectations of the user is now being set by the internet, so rich delivery environments are needed to keep up with UX demands.  HTML5 might not be there yet, but it is going to be supported across all the potential platforms, so its the only decision (maybe with some Javascript).  Firms have to stop trying to determine which platform is going to win, its unlikely there will be a single winner, and there is going to be volatility - the days of the Wintel empire are over and its very unlikely to ever strike back to have anywhere that level of control.  MS realised this in its decisions to de-emphasise its proprietary platform and move to a standards based one.

2. The sort of applications used internally in banks look positively neanderthal compared to the ones that firms give to their clients, who of course have a variety of target platforms (see above), and the past idea that you told the client what they had to use these days loses you the client.  Also the employee has expectations of what good apps look like from their personal life.  There is a need to reengineer how internal services are delivered to bring them up to date, as well as ensure new apps meet the benchmark, and rather than do an entire  parallel effort for internal and external, logic would indicate that you use the same artifacts for internal as well as external development - logic doesn't always win, but there are significant cost savings to be made in "do it once use many times".  Using HTML5 allows firms to get away from platform UX specific development in a way that WPF etc could never do.

Nice to think there are still people who support RIM, especially after the release of the last quarters numbers.  Which in itself brings many questions, like when (if?) BB10 arrives, will the train not only have left the station but finished its journey.  I am pretty sure that by then, 1Q 2013 (latest delay forecast), Rim will no longer look the same as an entity and one then questions how its going to overcome the huge obstacles presented by the other players. I think its clear that RIM is having huge problems getting BB10 onto their platform, not surprising as they are a hardware company competing against software companies.  So even if they get it to work in a half decent way, will they be able to keep up with the innovations that ther others are driving?  If Nokia is having difficulty, even with the heft of MS behind them, what then the chances of RIM? The management turmoil, drastic downsizing and unclear changes of focus cannot help RIM meet the challenges it faces, I doubt it will help its bottom line as revenues drop.

Not sure where you got the numbers for downloads from. There are many sites that track app store downloads, and none of them show anything like the disparity you indicate.  Perhaps it was selective statistics.

Whether Apple invented the smartphone or not, I am pretty sure that, the way we define smartphones today, RIM didn't, and currently don't meet the benchmark.

Sorry, it does say its costing $500mm - if you believe that.

Actually, as it turns out the plan is for 2, one for Equities which is already in place, and another called Athena which is an inhouse build using python and a number of other technologies covering all other asset classes.  Sounds pretty aggressive and somewhat optimistic to have a single solution capable of dealing with high volume businesses as well as the highly structured stuff. Still if successful they will have a cross-asset risk management capability which is a growing necessity, as well as wringing the efficiencies of common processes.  Of course the article doesn't tell us how much it is costing to save $300mm a year.  My experience indicates no one ever really goes back to check the saves, and that major, multi-year strategies like this (if they don't get derailed by budget cuts, missed deadlines, changing priorities or another merger) never actually kill off all the systems that they were supposed to displace leading to an increase in costs - maybe thats why no one goes back to check.

Think this is to reduce the internal legacy trading platforms that they have from the various mergers going back to Chase times and the re-entry and reconciliation issues.  Not clear what asset classes are involved, getting to 2 sounds a little optimistic if its all.

Don't think this affects the external trading platforms they use directly.