Bold CIOs are breaking free of legacy tech
Rotary Club members who donate $1,000 or more to the Rotary Foundation get a lot of special attention. They are named Paul Harris Fellows in honor of the organization's founder. They receive a certificate and an elegant lapel pin. It's an important award in the Rotary world, and one that has been around since 1957. But recently it had become the source of a lot of unhappiness.
When Discover Financial Services set out to expand its offerings beginning in 2007, the company's legacy technology was an obvious impediment, according to executive vice president and CIO Glenn Schneider. "As with many others who've been around for years and have multiple generations of technology in their data centers, the question was, how do we leverage that?" he says. The company's move into the banking business, with IRAs, CDs and many other types of accounts, made its banking platform an obvious choice for an update. "Our mission is to be the leading direct bank and payments platform," Schneider says. "We are all online, so to create competitive differentiation, we felt the necessity to start at the foundation level itself and create a new platform."
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
(Insider Story)