Amplitude/Delta-Bank Sopra Banking Software


Sopra has two main core banking systems, from acquisitions in 2011 (of fellow French company, Delta Informatique) and 2012 (Belgium-based Callataÿ & Wouters). This entry deals with the former’s broad offering, Delta-Bank, which has over 100 customers and a traditional strength in French-speaking Africa. That system is now sold as Amplitude. A number of established users took Delta-Bank into new territories ahead of the arrival of Sopra. Société Générale has been particularly influential here, with Delta-Bank taken for 20+ sites within the bank, including some relatively large operations. Via this route, it now has live sites in a broad range of countries including Croatia and Serbia. The solution has broad functionality, with a retail banking slant; the technology includes a fourth generation language, with support for a range of platforms. There are a few complementary applications, for areas such as payroll and human resources, now with others stemming from elsewhere in the parent company. Support for Islamic banking has been added; a rewrite of the front-end of the system using Java has been under way for some


time. Origins


It was reasonable to describe Delta Informatique as the leading banking software provider in French-speaking Africa, with a strong hold in this region. The Delta-Bank offering is widely used throughout this region. Many of its users have been the overseas operations of French and Belgian banks, such as Société Générale, Banque Belgolaise, BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole, Caisse d’Epargne and BBL. Delta Informatique claimed that more than 15 of its customers were using its system to support networks in excess of 100 branches. On this basis, Delta was a significant supplier. In terms of progress beyond here, this had largely come in the last few years before its acquisition via several large existing users which opted to take Delta-Bank into new territories, including central Europe. Delta was certainly a long-term player, having been around since 1981. It was set up by Claude Delage, who remained at the helm throughout as chairman. He had worked at Banque Paribas, BNP and Crédit Lyonnais in Africa before setting up the company. Paribas and Crédit Lyonnais were early services customers for the newly formed Delta Informatique. The company was based in Tours, in the Loire Valley, now an hour or so from Paris by TGV. Delage originally hailed from this city. The company initially offered IT services before embarking on the development of a new processing system. The system was written in Cobol; SocGen was involved in the original development. In 1992, the system underwent a substantial rewrite, bringing support for Unix, multi-currency and multi-


lingual capabilities, and a relational database (Informix). According to the supplier, this development was undertaken for Barclays, which took the offering for its operations in Gabon and Ivory Coast. The same version of the product, sold merely as ‘Delta’, was implemented by Melli-Bank in France in 1994. The supplier came to focus on French-speaking Africa, although it gained a few users in France and elsewhere (a couple of early customers were in Spain). The system underwent another overhaul in 1997, which


brought GUI and Windows NT support. From this time, Delta sought to sell a single version of the system, with the existing users of the older system ultimately moving to this. From this point on, it was sold as Delta-Bank. Delta did not have a sales-force as such but won a lot of business through recommendations. It did not run up against too many competitors, with most of the outside suppliers focused on other parts of the world. The main rival down the years was fellow French company, SAB. Another rework was needed in 1999 to make Delta-Bank Y2K compliant. The system is centred on a fourth generation language. In terms of functionality, Delta-Bank started out for


core retail banking and was gradually broadened over the years. It includes a branch teller element and can run in a decentralised mode via branch servers or in a fully centralised configuration, with some users still in the former category due to infrastructure problems. It includes a general ledger and


Universal Banking Systems Market Report | www.ibsintelligence.com 427


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