Unfortunately, this story doesn’t end with a proposed Windows 10 Mobile app coming from Bank of America anytime soon. Rather, Bank of America is joining the increasing ranks of the organizations that skipped the Windows 8 upgrade but are now flirting with the idea of advancing to Windows 10.
In an interview given to InformationWeek, Bank of America’s CTO David Reilly discusses Bank of America’s plans to adopt and deploy Windows 10. A growing interest in Widows 10 deployment in the enterprise is spreading, and Bank of America is no exception, “We’re looking to adopt as early as we can,” according to Reilly. However, the reality is, most enterprise upgrades are massive undertakings due to the sheer number of Windows devices that are run throughout an organization.
Fortunately, Bank of America sees the upgrade path to Windows 10 as a much easier transition than the one to Windows 7. While there is a discussion of Windows 7 and Windows 10, Windows 8 was completely left out of the conversation by Bank of America due to its inconsistent experience across tablets, desktops, and laptops. Employee devices never saw the update because the bank requires that its operating systems and applications function across both tablets and desktops properly. Bank of America came to the conclusion that Windows 8 wasn’t up to the task. However, with Windows 10 proving to be primarily the same experience across devices, Bank of America is more than eager to take advantage of the opportunity.
Unlike the consumer upgrades, enterprise adoption of Windows 10 is typically contingent on working with Microsoft to deliver custom builds of Windows 10 to businesses. A custom build of Windows 10 for Bank of America is vital as Windows 10 will need to interface with particular inventory as well as handle financially related security concerns.
“If this type of build is ready by November, it will be tested among development teams so as to address key concerns and bug fixes. From there, the plan is to enter a phased adoption so employees may opt for earlier upgrades before the OS is fully deployed throughout the enterprise.”
Next up, Reilly discusses how Windows 10 adoption may benefit from a higher level of technical proficiency that is being exhibited by today’s business elite.
“Half of the leadership team, for example, has been running Windows 10, while half continues to use Windows 7. This allows a group of execs to become familiar with the new OS, receive and edit documents, and understand the many differences between the two systems.”
This level of understanding benefits everyone at Bank of America, even though the bring-your-own-device revolution has sped up adoption of new technologies, nothing moves enterprise faster than executives who want to deploy their latest toy.
Lastly, Reilly covers the security concerns associated with banking and some of the items Windows 10 will need to handle in the future. There are essentially two shells to Bank of America’s protection, an outer and inner, and Reilly is concerned for both. Through the use of segmentation Bank of America can restrict contamination to smaller areas of information, limiting the spread of threat throughout the business. Internally, Reilly is looking to Windows 10 to help crack down on access management for digital resources given to Bank of America employees.
With Bank of America eventually running Windows 10 on its laptop, tablets and possibly ATMs, perhaps the banking institution will reevaluate its stance on apps for Windows 10.
