Just picked up yesterday's The SUN newpapers for the first time (yes, i am that slow in picking my papers sometimes) and i just noticed that there's a new financial daily section being introduced there (yeah i know, i am a bit behind the times!!). I must admit, The SUN is currently my favourite weekday paper, actually sometimes i think its the ONLY one i ready actually. And no, eventhough i can be a bloody cheapskate sometimes (or most of the time), its not because its free. I mean, i enjoy reading the their sports section. To say that it concentrates on football, actually to a certain extent it kinda does, but it does have other sports news. But the thing is, i actually read (and enjoy reading as well) other parts of the paper as well. I like the comments and editorials, and also the letters section. I think also, due to the compact nature of the paper, its like much more comfortable to read compared to the extra large size of the News Straits times ( i mean, who on earth invented THAT size for newspapers?) or the ultra-thick The Star.
The financial daily section definitely adds more value (muscle!!?) to the paper. Most weekends i do tend pick up The Edge, which i take the whole week to read through. But with the Financial daily section of the Sun everyday, (if i am not mistaken, it comes from the same people as the Edge), i get daily doses of it throughout the week as well. Which is good. Not as a substitute for the Edge, since the main reason i get it is for the main features, which spans over several pages, but more of like some financial news and comment quickies everyday.
Which brings me to my next point. Was reading in yesterday's Financial daily that Tabung Haji is opening up a tender worth RM 100 million to revamp its whole IT banking system. The first thing comes to mind. Where on earth do they have that much money? I do agree that, yes, their IT banking infrastructure does indeed need to be re-jigged, especially since their problems with it before. Like, come on, they are running on 20 year old HP3000s. Yes, 20 year old!! However, i must admit my knowledge of banking technologies are rather limited. What i do know is that most banking systems are mainframe based, and they do tend to be very very prehistoric systems. But your UNIX servers nowadays just can't compete (still!!) with the raw processing power / speed / robustness of these mainframe monsters, which is why banking systems are still predominantly mainframe based considering the amount of processing that it does every day as well as the cost implications whenever there is any downtime to the system. I guess, in the banking world, your systems *should* last much longer as well, judging by the amount banks invest on their banking systems.
Another point in piece of article that sort of amazes me is, that they are planning to have not one, but TWO Business Recovery Centers (BRC), and not just that, one of them is to be situated in Saudi Arabia. To those of you who aren't used to the term BRC, basically, a BRC is sort of a copy / backup of your whole data center, where in such a case where your current data center with all your customer data, balances etc, be unavailable or wiped out (like some terrorist decided to fly a plane into your data center and completely demolish it), all your precious data is not lost as it would be kept in another remote site, safe from the ruins of your demolished servers. Now, it might just be a banking regulation that every bank would need a remote BRC somewhere out of the country, well actually come to think of it, it could just be. I mean, if for any reason, our country got into a war or anything, and the whole country was affected, and out of pure bad luck, you current data center AND your BRC in Malaysia gets nuked down, there will still be data, safe in good ol' Saudi Arabia. Then you would probably ask, what happens if the one in Saudi ALSO gets nuked? Well, BRCs are just there to mitigate risks. If you were to think of it THAT way, and be ultra-paraniod, youd' probably have a BRC in every country. And that would cost some serious moo-lahs. It is just a trade off between how much you are willing to pay, and how much risk you would want to mitigate.
OK, well. Now reading what i wrote, it seems that the 100 million seems quite justified now, taking into account the setup of the BRC in Saudi as well.
Anyway, on a side note, it seems that i've received my first comment ever on this blog! Ha Ha Ha! So there are people out there that actually read my blabber. Oh well, if you are reading this one, please do feel free to come again.
Anyway, gotta make a move now. Its like half past eight. What the hell am i still doing here in the office? Need to go get some food as my stomach is nicely grumbling here and there. Raining out there as well. Damn you monsoon weather!!! The weather nowadays sucks big time.
Laters
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