04 · Consulting

IT, AI and business consulting.

IT-centric consulting for financial institutions since 2009: infrastructure, architecture, security, migrations, and the planning and numbers behind them.

Around a dozen banks in Switzerland, Germany, Liechtenstein and Andorra have worked with us. Their names stay under NDA; what we did for them is described below.

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Fields

What we have done, and do.

Twelve fields from the engagements of the last years, grouped the way a bank’s IT is organised. The list is not complete; it shows the range, from the database to the business case.

Infrastructure and operations

  • Avaloq infrastructure and release management

    Environments, release trains and the infrastructure under the core banking platform, planned and delivered on the dates the bank was promised.

  • Kubernetes and OpenShift performance

    Finding where a platform loses time and capacity, and getting both back: storage, networking, scheduling, and the applications on top.

  • Oracle databases

    Administration of databases that must not lose a transaction: tuning, upgrades, and backup and recovery that has been tested.

  • Middleware and messaging

    High-performance, zero-downtime messaging for financial transactions, and integration layers that keep running while everything around them changes.

Architecture and security

  • IT architecture

    Target pictures that fit the bank you have, not the one in the vendor’s slides, with decisions written down together with their reasons.

  • IT security

    Security as a property of the design: segmentation, identity, hardening, and the evidence auditors and regulators ask for.

  • High-reliability systems

    Planning and rollout of systems that may not fail: redundancy where it pays, operations that can carry it, drills before go-live.

  • Large migrations

    Data centres, platforms and core systems moved with a plan, a rehearsal and a way back.

Projects and numbers

  • Project planning, review and management

    Plans that survive contact with the first quarter, and independent reviews of projects that have stopped making progress.

  • Financial planning and controlling

    IT budgets, cost allocation and the controlling that shows where the money goes and what it buys.

  • Business cases

    The case for or against an investment, built on a measured baseline and numbers a CFO accepts.

  • AI strategy and architecture

    Where AI belongs in your landscape, which data may go where, local or API, and the platform that follows from those answers.

Clients

Banks, under NDA.

Financial institutions rarely allow their names to be used, and we do not ask them to. What we can say: which countries, how many, and what kind of work. References in a conversation, with the client’s consent.

2009
consulting for bank ITIndependent, owner-run, Zurich
12
financial institutions, aroundMajor banks, names under NDA
4
countriesSwitzerland, Germany, Liechtenstein, Andorra

How

How an engagement works.

Short on ceremony. A first call to understand the question, a written proposal with scope and price, and results you can read without us in the room.

Forms
Project and interim roles, architecture and project reviews, second opinions before a decision.
Where
On your premises, or remote where the work allows it.
Languages
German or English, documents in either.
Rates
On request, per day or per deliverable.
Related
Questions about AI often start here and continue with the training or the MMI Gateway.

Contact

Describe the problem.

A migration that must not slip, a platform that is slower than it should be, a project that needs a second opinion. We say what we would do, and whether we are the right people for it.

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Office
Masbando GmbH, Zurich