The planned solution combines CSC's Hogan Core Banking System and Oracle's Siebel retail banking front office application suite, including Siebel Branch Sales and Service, Contact Center, Branch Teller, and Self-Service and eBilling. The sales and service platform is intended to enable top-tier banks around the world to connect front and back office systems to provide more efficient and thorough service across each customer's banking channels of choice.

"Consumers' retail shopping experiences are raising expectations of their financial services providers," said Jim Eckenrode, a global banking research fellow at research and advisory firm TowerGroup. "Complex branch revitalization and multi-channel platform projects that unify front and back offices need to be accelerated to enable retail banks to perform at the expected level."

"Oracle and CSC share a commitment to helping retail banks achieve rapid value from the deployment of a complete front-to-back-office solution," said Don Russo, group vice president, Oracle Financial Services Global Business Unit. "Our work with CSC is consistent with Oracle's application integration strategy and is planned to leverage our ability to co-exist and integrate with partner application assets. Our collaboration should make it easier for banks using our applications to achieve a single view of the customer and improve service across delivery channels."

"CSC and Oracle will be working together to combine the best of our offerings to provide new and cost-efficient choices for the banking industry," said Jim Cook, president of CSC's Financial Services Sector. "This is only the beginning of a relationship intended to broaden top-tier and mid-tier banks' access to best-of-breed IT solutions."