By Michael Morey, President and Chief Executive Officer, Bluebird Network
As technology continues to evolve within the financial sector, legacy network architecture is no longer able to support the growing needs of modern banks. For financial institutions within major cities, low-latency, high-bandwidth fiber connectivity is readily available, making it easy to scale fiber according to connectivity requirements. Unfortunately, however, banks positioned in rural areas do not experience the same luxury of close proximity to an array of advanced fiber networks, making it increasingly difficult to maintain pace with the industry and serve customers with cutting-edge services and capabilities.
Globalization and technological advancements have significantly impacted the financial industry with radical changes to the production and distribution of financial services. With the emergence of electronic finance applications and expansion of physical locations into a growing number of rural locations, widespread, advanced network infrastructure is more important than ever to ensure high-quality interconnectivity between individual branches and functionality of newly implemented technologies.
In today’s global economy, the financial sector is one of the most rapidly-evolving verticals, and 2018 is expected to be a pivotal year for the industry. According to Deloitte’s 2018 Banking Industry Outlook, technology management and cyber risk mitigation are among the top five macro themes that will be critical to long-term growth. Banking institutions of all sizes will rely heavily on network infrastructure to enable fast, secure and high-bandwidth connectivity, allowing them to rapidly scale to establish secure connections between disparate facilities and to ATM locations.
To achieve this level of connectivity, banks located in rural areas are making the transition from legacy networks to more secure, low-latency WAN infrastructure. Legacy copper connections can no longer handle the high-bandwidth requirements of modern banking technologies, making it critical for financial institutions to adopt this new model of fiber connectivity across all locations, not just those within major metro areas. By partnering with a high-quality provider with an extensive fiber footprint that offers advanced Service Level Agreements (SLAs), these banks are able to securely access their network and applications from any location with guaranteed uptime.
The digital revolution is nowhere near complete and we can fully expect to see further technological advancement throughout the financial industry for years to come. In order to meet imminent demands, it’s important for banks to future-proof their network architecture with flexible solutions that are designed to scale with growing connectivity requirements. With advanced WAN architecture, financial institutions can ensure fast and secure connectivity across all branch location with the ability to transmit data and applications across their entire footprint for greater availability and improved quality of service. In addition, by switching to a fiber-based WAN, banks gain the ability to turn up locations quickly and easily with scalable connectivity, as they are no longer limited to the finite bandwidth capabilities of in-ground legacy copper networks.
Bluebird Network helps to equip customers with advanced fiber connectivity in rural regions, providing financial institutions with secure and reliable internet services to support their business. Its state-of-the-art fiber optic network provides access to a faster and more affordable private connection, allowing customers to serve their end users more reliably and efficiently. To learn more about Bluebird Network, visit www.bluebirdnetwork.com.
