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Plays well with others

Software developers want to come out and play, now that ATM manufacturers are moving toward shared applications. by Ann All, editor

July 29, 1999

Aravinda Korala, managing director of Scottish software developer KAL, remembers when the software market for PCs was dominated by a few big vendors writing mostly proprietary applications. Along came Bill Gates and a product called Windows. Suddenly developers everywhere could write applications based on Microsoft's operating system, effectively breaking the PC market wide open. Korala believes the same thing is about to happen to ATMs. "A lot of things are coming together now. We've seen the way the market worked with PCs, and I think we're going to take that curve as well," he said. While ATM manufacturers have long clung to proprietary applications, that's slowly beginning to change. Big players like NCR, Fujitsu/ICL and Tidel are introducing Web-enabled applications. Based on WOSA/XFS (Windows Open Services Architecture/Extension for Financial Services), they are designed to run on Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. That's clearing the way for software houses like KAL, which offers a software platform called Kalignite that allows applications to be developed using Web technologies such as dynamic HTML and ActiveX. Kalignite applications can run within a browser, usually Microsoft's Internet Explorer. KAL won special mention from Microsoft CEO Gates for its work in bringing Web applications to ATMs and kiosks. In February 1998, while announcing Microsoft's Windows DNA FS framework, Gates included KAL among developers who have incorporated support for the framework into their products. San Francisco-based innoVisions is using Kalignite on its new line of Atreva cash machines. The machines will be powered by Windows NT, including an Internet Explorer browser running on KAL's Kalignite platform. Craig Forrest, innoVisions vice president of technology, said, "The ATM channel is critical for our business. Internet technologies coupled with the ATM delivery channel open up a huge range of opportunities for us." For the first time, Korala said it makes economic sense for developers to create applications for ATMs and other self-service kiosks. Applications based on WOSA will run on any WOSA-compliant machine and won't have to be rewritten for different vendors. "We can get into the business of not just creating customer applications, but putting in a little R & D ourselves because we can sell it to more than one customer," Korala said. "Lots and lots of software houses are writing applications." It remains to be seen whether most applications will get some proprietary tweaking from ATM manufacturers. "You can make it as open as possible, but at some point it has to be integrated into a proprietary environment," said Rob Evans, NCR's director of marketing for self-service solutions. As developers take a more active role, ATM owners will likely gain access to a wider range of features and functions. For instance, a Canadian company is working on an application that will allow blood donors to be paid at an ATM, solving a security problem for blood banks that don't want to keep a lot of cash on hand. Preconceived notions of what an ATM is and what it can do are changing. "We're starting to wonder whether ATM is an appropriate moniker for this type of machine," Evans said. NCR, working with ACI Canada and Tandem Canada, offers an e-ticketing application on machines at a handful of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce branches. In addition to conducting standard financial transactions, ATM users can browse movie schedules and purchase tickets from the Cineplex Odeon theater chain. Tickets are printed and dispensed at the machine, and the cost is automatically debited from a user's account. New applications won't be implemented overnight. Initially, they will simply duplicate existing features to run on Windows NT without the TCP/IP communications protocol. "Many current applications don't use the Internet at all, but they are Web ready," Korala explained. Then banks, which have TCP/IP connections on their own Intranets, will connect some ATMs to TCP/IP. Finally, banks may switch to a TCP/IP host. "That's really the utopia," Korala said. "But you can't go to a bank that has 2,000 machines and say 'would you like to replace your network with TCP/IP?' and do a big bang switchover." While banks are the first to experiment with Web applications at the ATM, Korala predicts that retail locations will be where the technology really takes off. Noting that Tidel, a major supplier to the off-site market, has a new Web-enabled product called the Chameleon, he said, "You can buy a machine that dispenses only cash and make a surcharge on the transaction. Or you can buy a machine that also dispenses tickets and other items, and that gets much more interesting. More money per transaction is potentially available." While acknowledging that ATM users might balk at paying higher fees for items like tickets, Korala said, "Ten years ago, people said you couldn't surcharge for cash." Web-based applications are being written almost exclusively for Windows NT, even though the majority of ATMs still run OS/2. "If you ask how many ATMs are running NT, you'll come up with a number close to zero," Korala said. "But if you ask how many new applications are being written in anything other than NT, that number is also close to zero." Programmers and developers starting talking about NT in 1992, customers started demanding it in 1995, and vendors are just beginning to deliver it. Support for NT at the platform level became available only recently. "Nobody yet has a standard Windows NT cash application available on a worldwide basis," Korala said. Yet both software developers and ATM manufacturers seem certain that NT is on the verge of a major breakthrough, perhaps because of the interest in bringing Web technologies to the ATM. "NT is the only choice for new applications," Korala said.

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KAL ATM Software

KAL is a world-leading provider of multivendor ATM platform, application and management software, specializing in solutions for bank ATMs, self-service kiosks, and bank branch networks.

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