utilization of standards

[Keith A. Milner]

On Tuesday 21 August 2007 09:31:02 Maciej Gawinecki wrote:
> Let me put how I understand your statement.
>
> Using OFX standard by banks is not only the question of introducing
> external interface for bank's clients (and their application), but also
> adapting their internal solution to work in regard to OFX. Am I right ?

Sounds like a reasonable assumption.

To do this they would need some kind of support software...

>
> BTW, does bank usually prefer to buy off-the-shelf products, like
> mechanism for managing accounts, rather then designing and implementing
> their own solutions ?
>

They could develop their own or buy an off-the-shelf, supported product. I 
suspect the latter is more likely in most banks, where IT development and 
support is not a key part of their business.

>
> But Intuit with their Quicken prefers to sell solutions based on their
> own standards, like QIF or QFX, even to bank manager, to gain role of
> monopolist on this market. Is it correct understanding ?
>
> So why the newest Quicken handle with OFX standard ?

I believe OFX was developed partly by Intuit. I suspect this was because it 
was perceived to be valuable to develop a standard interface for financial 
tools like Quicken and MS Money.

This may have been driven by the banks who were fed up of dealing with 
proprietary standards and having their users locked into one choice, or it 
may have been driven by other suppliers (e.g. Microsoft) wanting to get into 
the market.

Whatever the driver for it's development, as one of the main developers of OFX 
it would be dumb of Intuit not to support it!

I think what David is saying is that, despite it's "open standard" status, 
banks still associate OFX with Intuit as they are one of the few suppliers of 
off-the-shelf support software.

Cheers,

-- 
Keith Milner