This week’s episode of Conversation with Kip discusses historical trends in computing and the impact (or lack thereof) on major financial systems, including cloud, mobile, internet, and ERP.

The latest major change in business systems is cloud. Cloud has the potential for significantly changing financial systems, but IBM estimates only 20% of historical workloads have moved to the cloud. I believe when it comes to sensitive data, like that kept in most business ledgers, the percentage is lower. And even those that have migrated tend to be lifting and shifting of existing applications, not a significant change in what those applications are or do.

Prior to Cloud, we had mobile. It changed our access to the core business systems, both input and output, but it didn’t really change the way the systems worked. The core ledgers were not moved onto mobile devices.

Before that we had the Internet. Again, this is more of a change in communications, network, and access, both for input and output. But the core ledgers did not change all that much because of the Internet.

Before that we get to ERP systems. And here we have major changes, often initial automation for many businesses, of core ledger processes. This was a major trend in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Banking applications though predate this work, and in many instances we are still living with applications which were fundamentally architected in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

This is Episode 190 of Conversations with Kip, the best financial system vlog there is. Literally learn more–about ledgers and financial systems–at LedgerLearning.com.

Watch all episodes in order at the Conversation with Kip Playlist