Wow, according to Banking Business Review , ICBC (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, aka, 中国工商银行 [zhong guo gong shang yin hang]) is now the world's largest bank, as measured by value, displacing Citigroup. Another report suggests that ICBC is considering...

After reading so much press lately about how banking is becoming increasingly commoditized, it's great to see a story like this over at Finextra: "Wachovia releases online retail imaging tool ." By combining image-capture with on online exception handling...

There are a couple of interesting tidbits in the news today that illustrate the choices that banks currently face in deciding how to scope their activities. Reduce scope: Right here in my hometown of Cleveland, OH, KeyCorp has agreed to sell McDonald...

I spent most of week-before last in Mexico City, speaking at the CL@B conference. At one of the side events, a reception hosted by Getronics, one of our major partners, I had the chance to speak with James Gardner , who asked me if I intended to speak...

CNET has the low-down on our current organization here . We have a great set of people in key leadership roles, so I'm very excited about this year. I'm part of David Vander's worldwide banking org, as an Industry Technology Strategist focused on Channel...

I'd like to pass along these announcements (regarding case studies, events, and tools), courtesy of Mike Wons, another member of our team. Financial Services Firm Supports Growth Through Microsoft Infrastructure Optimization HSBC acquired...

I’m finally recovering from Tech Ready. Last week was incredibly busy, and I learned a lot about recently-released and upcoming products, especially those that have the potential to help our customers improve their branch banking infrastructure. All...

Tech-Ready (Microsoft's internal technical conference) opened today, and I spent most of the day digging into our workflow stack, in addition to getting some hands-on experience with System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2006. I'll discuss DPM in...

Finextra reports that SQL injection attacks against banks are skyrocketing. I can't tell you how many times I've seen various data-driven sites fall over when I (innocently enough, I swear) enter text containing quotation marks. I wince every time...

For the inaugural entry of my new blog, I'd like to introduce myself and let you know what I'll be blogging about here. My name is Brian Jackson, and I am an Industry Technology Strategist on the Worldwide Financial Services team at Microsoft. This...