The opening of regulations was essential for Luxembourg to stay competitive in a globalized market. It is a fact that companies that did dominate their business for years or even centuries, today are under pressure from new players that often bypass the industry by using digital technology to invent new channels to reach their customers. There is no industry that will be spared. The financial sector is not an exception. Beside digital payment platforms like Apple Pay or Android Pay there are plenty of new start-ups in that domain.

One brilliant example is N26. They came from nowhere to 300000 customers. 42% of their customers are aged between 25 and 34. The signup for a free bank account takes 5 minutes. While the bank uses an N26 Mastercard, all account and card functions can be monitored real-time and controlled directly within their mobile app. This means not only real-time banking with push notifications to confirm every card and account transaction, but also integration with other social platforms that provide location based services or hotel/restaurant information. They are now operating in 17 markets within the EU. To date, N26 has processed more than €3bn in transaction volume.

Disruptive players like N26 became possible due to the availability of new digital technologies and an endless amount of compute, storage and network resources that are instantly available via the public cloud.

Luxembourg has finally acknowledged, that it has to open the regulation to allow local companies to stay competitive.

Already today, plenty of business people in the financial sector are bypassing IT while signing up to public cloud services, but also the IT departments of the banks integrated SaaS services like “ServiceNow” into their portfolio. The opening of the regulation was certainly overdue.

The new players start with an all-digital DNA and without any legacy, while the IT of the incumbents are still using similar ways to serve their business as they did years ago. It becomes a top challenge for CIOs to transform their classical legacy environment into a Digital Platform and integrate external cloud services. The driver is “Time to Market” (TTM). The challenge of the CIOs is to support their business lines, staying competitive in the digital age and launch new products faster.

Dimension Data has defined a number of products and services to support CIOs on their journey to this new age of IT. We have a strong knowledge when it comes down to build a digital platform. Our experience comes from the Digital Transformation shift within the NTT/Dimension Data group, but also from concrete projects for the new players on the local market, which had the chance to start their business with a Digital Platform.

We know how to protect your data in the open cloud and how to shift your workloads safely and securely form your on-premises environment to open cloud platforms from players like Amazon or Microsoft. On top of that, Dimension Data has its own Managed Cloud Platform (MCP) that is available in 26 countries. If you prefer to have your data next to Luxembourg our nearest locations are Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Brussel and London. The platform perfectly integrates private and public cloud services. It allows our clients to manage on premise and public resources via one single console. Independent if you base your digital platform on our MCP or other cloud services, a unique differentiator is, that our Managed Service contracts now include Level 2 platform support for open cloud solutions. This means that your support doesn’t stop at the boarder of your physical datacentre.

We invite you to discuss the design and support of your Digital Platform. Get in touch with us and welcome to the new age of Enterprise IT!

Michael Mossal – Digital Transformation Lead at Dimension Data