BIAN, the Banking Industry Architecture Network, will soon publish the second, thoroughly revised and extended edition of its BIAN book. The book explains the need for, the theory and the practice of the BIAN standard.

The need

The ecosystem for financial institutions is changing dramatically. In order to respond rapidly to this changing environment, these institutions need agility in both their organization and ICT systems. The reality, however, is that they suffer from the handicap of having had a head-start. They were among the first to enter the digitalization path and now typically have a large, complex legacy base.  They face high risks and high costs in updating existing software. Interoperability in an Open API environment is a major problem.

BIAN is seeking to provide a Reference Architecture for the financial industry that supports banks in their journey towards an agile digital architecture.

BIAN uses a unique, capability-based approach to achieve these goals. It defines a MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) set of 320 capabilities that cover all of the needs of every bank. These capabilities are called ‘Service Domains’. BIAN artifacts, such as the Service Domain Landscape and BIAN APIs, are published on the BIAN website www.bian.org . Navigating to the digital repository will open up a wealth of information. However, in order to optimize the use of this Reference Architecture, it is helpful to understand the principles and concepts behind this knowledge base.

The theory

The BIAN Reference Architecture and standard are the result of cooperation between many partners in the financial industry.

BIAN uses a Metamodel that represents the concepts used in its Reference Architecture and explains how these relate to each other.  This Metamodel guides and directs the development of the BIAN standard.

Part I of the book explains this Metamodel, its building blocks and the patterns according to which they are combined. This prepares the reader for the next part: an overview of how the BIAN Framework can be of use to different disciplines and in uniting different viewpoints on the enterprise.

The practice

BIAN can serve enterprise and solution architects on both a business and application level, as well as software designers and developers. It can also be useful for project and program managers and managers in the banking industry in general.

Part II of the book provides guidance on how BIAN can be applied by practitioners in different disciplines, and how it can support their inter-working. The common Frame of Reference provided by the BIAN Architecture supports management by offering a holistic view on information from different viewpoints within the enterprise.

This part of the book is illustrated by several real-life and fictitious but realistic examples. The following blogs will provide more details on the theory and practice of BIAN.