IBM has joined the Banking Industry Architecture Network (Bian), an organisation working to establish a service-oriented architecture (SOA) standard in the finance industry.
As well as becoming a full member of the Bian community, Big Blue's Chae An, vice president of financial services solutions, will take a position on the body's board.
Bian was spun out of SAP in 2008 as an independent, member owned, not-for-profit association to establish and promote a common architectural framework for banking interoperability issues.
It now claims around 30 members after enticing several major players last year, including Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Rabobank, Scotiabank, ACI Worldwide and Infosys.
In July the group also published its latest service landscape, "an ordered collection of semantic specifications defining unique and discrete business recognisable IT capabilities".
Steve Van Wyk, chairman of Bian's board and global CIO at ING, says: "IBM's extensive expertise in industry models, open standards and the financial services industry will enable Bian to make great strides forward in creating a common model, from which the whole industry will benefit."