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Doing it by the numbers …
At this year's ATMIA conference and expo, numbers were in record-setting territory, the most important being the 1,100 registered attendees who showed up.
February 27, 2015 by Richard Buckle — Founder and CEO, Pyalla Technologies, LLC
It was another quick road trip last week to Las Vegas for the annual ATMIA US conference. I have to thank the folks at ATMIA for putting on quite a show — numbers were in record-setting territory, the most important being the 1,100 registered attendees who showed up.
I have been involved on both sides of the "event table," having served on the boards of user communities from HP NonStop to IBM System z mainframe, and I know just how much work goes into holding events like this — well done to all involved at ATMIA.
So what were the numbers? Beyond the attendee count, there were some 96 vendors, and the opening night reception on the exhibition floor saw the spotlights trained on many of them.
I elected to return to the same hotel where I stayed just a few short weeks ago during the HP show, but this time, my room was on the opposite side of the hotel, and the view gave me ample material for my Feb. 17 post to the HP NonStop community blog, Real Time View, "Death of big projects?"
In that post I wrote that the Las Vegas landscape continues to be littered with the remains of failed Big Projects. History tells us that Las Vegas isn't alone in this respect — just look at IT — IT Big Projects that failed likely outnumber those that succeeded.
It might seem cavalier of me to suggest that the days of the IT big project are over, but by many accounts, this might be truer than we realize. And so it leads me to the focus of this post: Is the use of cash so ingrained that any proposed alternative is doomed to fail?
During the opening session, references were made to a number of YouTube postings by ATMIA and the ATMIA Cash Council. The first, Cash is Queen was a play on the usual phrase, Cash is King, but this time with the twist that if you are armed with the wrong financial instruments even the big night out can go horribly wrong.
The opening day welcome address and keynote presentation also included a video update, "Cash always Works," which dovetails nicely with my own experiences when, on several occasions here and abroad, I have been held hostage to the "no credit cards accepted" fine print that I had missed prior to attempting to execute a transaction with plastic.
I have since attached a small rubber pouch to the back of my mobile phone — a giveaway from another event. While its intent is to hold a couple of business cards and a hotel key, it's also the right size to house a single large-denomination bill without giving too much away.
Now I know that wherever I find myself, I will always have cash even if my wallet is left behind on a dresser or kitchen shelf. I am still working on routines to make sure I leave home with wallet, house keys, phone and so forth, but it's the mobile phone I almost always pick up first — while still leaving behind my wallet.
King or queen, cash has yet to meet its match. However, with cash comes ATMs and with ATMs come access cards, be they credit or debit. And when it comes to Big Projects, nothing on the horizon could be as big as EMV. So I was taken aback somewhat to see so few banners atop exhibitor booths screaming "EMV!" — I counted just two.
As much reporting on fraud as we have seen of late, and given a recognition among IT professionals that defending against the bad guys requires multiple layers of defense, you would think that EMV would be welcomed by all event participants.
Enjoying a cup of coffee with one attendee, Jim, an operations manager from one of the many ISOs at the event, it became clear that EMV was among his top priorities (as was bitcoin, incidentally) — and also that getting everyone in the transaction path capable of handling EMV was still a major challenge.
Perhaps the best comment I heard came from Ascert, a vendor specializing in testing software. According to their chief, Rich, the mood surrounding EMV support was the same "as [it] was years ago, when IT faced Y2K." That is to say, how much time do we really have and what will be the fallout from failures big and small?
As for this year's April and October fraud liability shifts, my own observation is that these dates will pass and there will be only marginal, or incremental, support for the cards — I just checked my wallet and sure enough, among the mix of Visa and MasterCard cards, none of them has a chip and it's already the end of February.
It's beyond belief that, as if by magic, all of my cards will be replaced over the next few months. Still, the consensus is that, yes, we will get there, and no, the adoption of EMV will not be on the list of Big Projects that fail. Well, not totally, anyhow!
By the numbers, even with as few banners as I saw promoting EMV, the U.S. IT community appears to be fully engaged, so perhaps it's not the time that is important (yes, there will be insurance I suspect), but rather, simply getting there in the end.
I am about to head out the door to run errands — the usual Saturday morning flurry of activities that most of us are familiar with — and yes, I have my mobile phone with me.
I have my wallet and keys as well, and shortly I will be picking up groceries, topping up with gas and grabbing a coffee. I will drop off laundry and drop into the local wine shop for a bottle of Shiraz for dinner, and all the time I will be using different cards based on the nature of the transaction — debit for some, credit for others.
And as I do I'll wonder — even with the ATMIA event fresh in my memory — "When will this next layer of defense against fraud come to fruition?"
EMV won't fail, I am sure of that. But then again, the likelihood of something even better coming along to make the effort redundant is certainly in the cards — Plastic, chip included, or otherwise. As we all know all too well, the only sure thing is change!
And speaking of change (spare change that is, and the topic for a post at another time), whether king or queen, cash will continue to reign despite any news to the contrary. And better protecting our access to cash is one Big Project that IT will be engaged in long after deadlines have passed.
photo courtesy jános balázs |flickr
About Richard Buckle
Richard Buckle is the founder and CEO of Pyalla Technologies, LLC. He has enjoyed a long association with the Information Technology (IT) industry as a user, vendor, and more recently, as an industry commentator, thought leader, columnist and blogger. Richard participates in the HPE VIP Community where he is part of their influencer team.
