By Sean O’Donnell, Managing Director EMEA, SevOne.

The proliferation of mobile banking has soared in the last 12 months. In April 2013 it was highlighted that one in five use their mobile phone to bank. Moreover, The Payments Council predicts that by 2022 mobile phone transactions will rise to £1.5bn, compared with £365m (September 2014). Those stats can’t and haven’t been ignored by the banking sector and as a result it now intends to make it even easier for mobile users to make transactions – all the payee needs to do is know the recipient’s mobile phone number. But with it set to become even easier for mobile users to make transactions, how will the network cope with an influx of mobile traffic?

This issue is something banks clearly haven’t prepared for yet. Last month some of the UK’s largest banks suffered mobile banking outages, riling users who were unable to check their accounts. RBS’ justification was simply that high traffic resulted in there being an outage. But today’s users expect 24/7 connectivity and the truth of it is, these banks are aiming for innovation but, in some cases, aren’t using the best breed of technology to do so. Legacy systems are unfortunately still running through the veins of many of these large banks, creating silos of data and an inability to jump easily between online, branch and mobile services as a result. Until banks dedicate efforts into their back-office – ensuring that data is collected from all relevant sources – users’ expectations will not be met.

Only by investing in scalable solutions can IT teams get true visibility of activity happening across the entire network in real-time. They must combine performance monitoring, management and reporting into one holistic approach, which will allow them to detect and avoid issues in a timely and accurate manner. By implementing this method, customers can enjoy a seamless mobile banking experience, without disruption or even an understanding that there was ever an issue.

If the banking industry kicks old habits to the curb and learns from past mistakes, it has the potential to be one of the strongest sectors for technology.

SEAN O’DONNELL BIO

Sean O’Donnell is Managing Director, EMEA at SevOne.
Sean is responsible for running the operations of SevOne in the EMEA territory and has extensive experience of both the Telco and Managed Service Provider market and the needs of those customers.

Sean joined SevOne in October 2010 to start SevOne’s EMEA operations. During his tenure EMEA revenues have grown in excess of 100% year on year. He currently manages an EMEA team of approx. 20 people.

Prior to joining SevOne Sean was responsible for running the Western EMEA region for EMC Ionix (EMC Smart’s). Sean’s team was responsible for sales of Smarts into a number of Telco customers including BT, Vodafone, C&W, BT Radianz, Orange UK and Interoute as well as managed service providers such as CSC and Fujitsu Services.

Sean joined EMC as part of the acquisition of Smarts where he was responsible for direct sales of Smarts to a number of Telco customers including Telenor, Elisa and Vanco, along with managed services providers including and Fujitsu Services Finland.

Prior to Smarts, Sean held various sales positions including account director positions at Nortel responsible sales of the complete Nortel portfolio to customers including AboveNet (formerly Metromedia Fiber Network), FirstMark Communications Europe and Level 3 Communications in Europe