The retail and wholesale banking sector is the leading adopter of secure XML Web services, according to a survey of European developers released today at Tech.Ed 2002, Microsoft's European developer conference.
The survey was conducted online by PC-I Live on behalf of Microsoft Emea during May and June 2002 and involved 1769 developers and IT professionals. Respondents classified themselves as developers, systems architects, Web site developers, IT consultants, IT professionals and database administrators.
Results of the survey show the highest development of Web services in Europe to be found in the retail and wholesale banking sector, with 38% of respondents developing Web services in this area.
Vic Gundotra, general manager of the .NET platform strategy group at Microsoft, comments: "There is significant Web services development taking place in the financial sector and it is clear that this industry understands the business value and powerful capabilities that .NET can bring."
The Bank of New York (BNY), which is currently deploying .NET technologies for its retail fund servicing platform Rufus, was wheeled out at Tech.Ed to talk through its experiences.
Bill Hookings, head of retail funds product development from BNY, says: "Using Visual Studio .NET, BNY’s developers are able to bring to the table an XML Web services solution that has been developed rapidly and is both flexible and cost effective...By developing with C#, the .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET, we have a very rich application running on a modern, scalable mainstream architecture."
Other finance customers to have adopted .NET technologies include Nationwide, Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein.