MAINDENHEAD, England - Level Four Software Ltd. is warning ATM operators to not jump too quickly on the Windows Vista bandwagon.
Microsoft has been touting the substantial benefits businesses will achieve with Windows Vista, said Martin Macmillan, Level Four's business-development director. But for ATM deployers, whose transition from OS/2 is still and in some cases ongoing, the benefits of yet another systems overhaul should be questioned and strategically gauged.
The move to Windows NT/XP was the catalyst for creating an open standards ATM environment, Macmillan said, offering banks greater possibilities to separate the proprietary relationship between ATM hardware and software.
"It cannot be ignored that a transition from the Windows XP operating system to Windows Vista is a natural evolution that ATM deployers will eventually implement," Macmillan said. "Indeed, Vista offers the promise of greater security and stability and will provide banks with the opportunity to further enhance customer-service delivery at the ATM. However, banks must exercise caution in their approach to Vista at such an early stage in the operating system's lifecycle."
Macmillan adds that automated testing solutions that "exhaustively check" ATM software should be used to address potential faults before any changes to applications or operating systems are made.
"Banks have already undertaken rigorous testing on their current Windows platform, now predominantly XP, to improve its stability to control ATMs," he said. "While Vista is still in its infancy, it lacks the maturity and improved reliability that XP now offers for the control of a mission-critical banking device."
Macmillan said ATM deployers are likely to be reluctant to upgrade to Vista, since upgrades to XP have been so recent.
"They will benefit from resisting the urge to migrate and allow early adopters to test Vista and see it proven in the self-service field," he said. "For mission-critical banking devices such as ATMs, banks should adopt a wait and see policy before considering a migration project of this magnitude."
