| Johan V.
Posts: 7
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« on: August 20, 2015, 03:47:22 am » |
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After wasting 8 years with a team of 5 people on a Java based core banking system I remembered Informix.
I was surprised to see what 4js had to offer and even more surprised to see that a 20 year old Informix system I had on a CD still compiled.
(This was not a banking system).
The Java project failed mainly because we used Oracle XE to develop (with Oracle under Hibernate) and we had a dot.net branch system.
Oracle was way too expensive and nobody wants a Microsoft PC running a branch application any more.
And the Java persistence is such that once you have selected a database it is almost impossible to change.
A third factor was that the system was single institution, it could not be used for Cloud.
So we started again on 1 October 2013, with 2 people, using Genero BDL.
The database was no problem (I use Postgresql), everything was HTML5 and I added an institution ID to each database table for multi tenancy (I recently found out that SAP do the same, nice and simple, one physical database with many logical databases inside, identified by institution ID.
We implemented the first system in an Islamic cooperative in Bandung, Indonesia on 1 April 2014.
I am based in Indonesia.
And another one on 1 September 2014, this time for the employee cooperative of an Indonesian bank with 25,000 employees. This one uses conventional banking.
The system currently comprises of 180K lines of BDL code.
It handles:
1) Islamic and Conventional Banking'
2) Branch and Branch-less banking
3) Multi institution (can run hundreds of small banks under one GAS instance)
4) Multi language
5) Multi currency
6) Loan origination combined with loan administration
7) Virtual accounts
8) Bill payments
9) Mobile banking
10) Full multi segment GL inside
11) Automatic accounting entries (no end of day, end of month and end of year)
12) 24/7 system
13) ...
So that is all good.
Now to the downside.
I like Genero because of its licensing, it makes it harder to pirate a system.
(In a country where virtually every banking system that is currently used stems (was copied) from Jack Henry Systems (1975, AS400 and RPG) this is an important consideration).
But the problem is pricing.
A programmer makes around $500 a month here and a Genero dev license costs $2,300.
$2,300 is fine for the developed world where a programmer makes at least 10 times that.
Then the run time licenses.
For 10 users the cost is $3,000 up front plus 20% maintenance.
For $3,000 you can buy 3 systems here, written in Foxpro, paid once only.
Not good system of course but still, the price is the determining factor used for comparison.
The odd thing about Genero licensing is that when a user logs on, does nothing all day and logs off, one license is consumed all day long.
With that same license I can process thousands of mobile transactions though the web service.
Most of the small banks (some use Excel spreadsheets) only do a few transactions per day.
I could force a log off after each transaction but that does not look professional.
Or I could write another front end and play that through the web server. But then I lose the stateful interactivity and I like that a lot. And it is a lot of work.
Indonesia has a population of 250 million people, 80% of these people do not have a bank account.
The government wants every Indonesian to have an account.
So the potential is enormous but I cannot sell.
It is always the same story, they like it but it is too expensive.
Last week I was asked by someone from Holland if I could customize an open source core banking system called Mifos.
He likes my system and he sees a lot of potential here but again, the licensing cost is prohibitive.
I told him No because I am not going back to Java, Hibernate and, in this case, mysql.
My question to the forum:
Do any of you sell newly developed Genero systems to small and medium size customers in the developing world ?
If yes, please let me know how you do it.
Thanks and best regards
Johan Vermeij
Jakarta
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