Processing financial transactions is impossible when the systems used to do so are so old and finicky. One started to go down yesterday, then went down completely today. How is anyone supposed to serve clients when facing this? This does not mean that employees can miss a KPI because of a system? Nope, here is a workaround that takes three times as long or just hold the work until later. Holding it until later means that items won't get processed in a timely manner. Explain THAT to a client,,,
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I managed a process that was designed in 2003 with minimal updates around 2005 or 2006. Throughout the years anyone who was assigned with the process had to babysit every step, which would be stretch across one month’s time. It didn’t take up every day of the month, but sometimes the entire day was spent remediating issues with the ancient process. When I would bring it up as something that needed to be updated, I was told oh it still works, we have immediate needs to be fixed. After I left, even with extremely detailed instructions, the people now handling it have struggled. Now the worthless manager on the team was concerned. Probably interrupted his errands or lunch. Since leaving, the stress is gone, even to where my doctor commented. It’s sad what a mess FIS has become.
@vf they might not, they sure don't have one for client's businesses being serviced by FIS staff.
@vf Some teams have been instructed to only address defects if the client escalates the issue. So all defects that are logged but the clients are not escalating, get ignored. Apparently we only address things when the clients are fed up with FIS being unresponsive.
@g9 I'm sorry, but does FIS have a quality assurance team? My experience is clients call when product is broken.
@p2 legacy core products from thirty years ago. They look and behave like they were developed thirty years ago. If they do fail, it will be catastrophic. Any financial trades will be delayed while the banking side may be paralyzed completely. Changing the way the world banks? In theory, financial trades could be covered for a day, maybe, but not on the banking side.
@hw, you are probably referring to legacy core products written 30-some years ago. The product I was working on was a web application written around 2010, so it's not that old. Every year, security standards add more vulnerabilities, so we have to spend time fixing them every year. It's a never-ending task.
Most large organizations do not want to spend time on technical debt unless it causes a real and public problem that causes them to lose a lot of money all at once.
Otherwise, they only want to patchwork all the systems together and only spend effort on the "se-y" "new" things that "bring more customers" or "make more money".
If you can't boil the technical debt down to a dollar mount on a spreadsheet that shows it reducing profit, then it's not going to be taken seriously.
@h4 not my area of expertise, however, how could what exists now possibly pass vulnerability scans? It's straight out of 1995.
@g9 I got laid off in June. My experience was that it might not take too long to fix the bugs, depending on how complex the fix is, but it would take months to get the fix to pass the vulnerability scan. The scan always finds new vulnerabilities, so you have to go back and forth until it finally passes. I remember spending more than three months on this so we could install the new release.
@g9 It is simple to replace old code…what a ridiculous thing to say.
It is simple to replace old code.
Test and QA environment, apply code, test, migrate to production over weekend. It really is not hard or lengthy one bit.
The problem is fellow management have decided not to push as much as they can as any downtime or bad effect costs them their job or bonuses. That is the problem. We are now in a world of if you do not touch it you are safe.
As someone who's job it is to fix these things, we regularly don't get funding for it since it "doesn't make money". I'm too far down the food chain to try and explain the cost of code that breaks. Change management has made installing code so involved it now makes a quick fix into a months long ordeal. I get it, we need to put good code in, but we avoid fixing things now.
These are systems used for all financial transactions for clients who do so. These are not sole client systems. The C-suite has stalled updating them for years and years. They may no longer be able to take the strain and just, you know, break irretrievably.
It amazes me how clueless people are to the loopholes and writeoffs plus insurance payouts these big companies get under "security" contracts and clauses. This has been an ongoing thing for years for companies in trouble, they use these loopholes to write off billions in debt, and contracts. They are allowed to bring in all this 3rd party security auditing, contractors, companies, and yet never have to actually fix anything, then they get to write it all off and then some, and then get to cut employees in the name of security also. This is why the big 500 are being looked at bringing in Claude Mythos. They literally are letting the apps and systems go on purpose with no real remediation plans so they can balance more of their debt. The loopholes have to be plugged. If its not the labor ones, it security, its offshoring, and now they get to blame the imaginary boogeyman "AI" with no recourse. Go look up the laws that allow them to do this. SEC won't force them to remediate and prove it either.
Sometimes FIS expects the client to fund the application.
If the capital is not being spent on these systems, then FIS does not see a long term future for them and has other plans. What those plans are is any ones guess.