Podcast

Podcast: Eliminating the need to update ATM hardware in Windows migrations

Aravinda Korala, CEO of Kal, an ATM software firm, discusses how ATM operators can avoid the added costs of replacing motherboards when upgrading to Windows 10.

June 28, 2019

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Enforced hardware upgrades are a long-standing and painful problem for the ATM industry. But now there's a solution. OS-Virtualization will open your eyes to an exciting alternative that brings freedom at last from enforced, costly and disruptive hardware upgrades. Visit kal.com/hypervisor to find or more.

Podcast Summary

In January, Microsoft will no longer support Windows 7. To remain PCI compliant, ATM operators need to upgrade to Windows 10. The problem is, however, that the motherboards in some ATM machines may not be compatible with the newer version of the operating system.

In this podcast, Aravinda Korala, CEO of Kal, talks about how his ATM software firm found a solution that removes the need to upgrade processor boards when ATMs move to a new version of Windows.

Korala reflects back on 2014, when 95% of the world's ATM machines had to upgrade from Microsoft's 12-year-old Windows XP to Windows 7. If you continued to run XP, there would be no support from Microsoft.

Running unsupported software "might be alright for your home PC, but in the banking industry, PCI requires that only supported software run inside your ATM. And not just your ATM, but all of your banking infrastructure," he said.

As a result, in 2014, banks spent billions of dollars making the upgrade. In some cases, ATM machines had to upgrade their hardware as well.

"If you have ATMs that are old enough that the motherboard doesn't fit anymore, then you have to buy a whole new ATM, so now we are talking $10,000 to $20,000, and if the machine is through the wall, if it is in Manhattan, can you imagine what it takes to do that — it is a significant task."

Korala's firm started looking into a solution.

"Our customers were saying, this is terrible, never again," he said.

Working alongside Red Hat, VMware and Wind River, Kal developed a solution called OS-Virtualization, which applies a widely used technology prevalent in today's datacenters known as a hypervisor to uncouple the hardware from an ATM's operating environment.

"You can have Linux and Windows both inside the ATM at the same time. A hypervisor allows you to install one operating system and then run another operating system as a virtual machine. Our proposal to solve this upgrade problem is to install Linux on the ATM and then run Windows 10 as a virtual machine inside Linux," Korala explains.

To hear more, listen to the full podcast.

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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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