What New Technology Credit Unions Covet for 2013

By W.B. King

For at least one credit union, Christmas came early last year when Liberty Savings Federal Credit Union in New York City won the $100,000 Extreme Technology Makeover sponsored by Credit Union Journal and Horsetail Technologies.

But all others must hope they have made Santa’s Nice List for this year. Below, IT execs from credit unions around the U.S. share what was on their Christmas list as part of Credit Union Journal’s 11th Annual Holiday Wish List.

Biometrics and Magic Wands

The $109-million Pioneer West Virginia Federal Credit Union has a handful of wishes originating from disparate departments. Collector Carolyn Justice said a “Dual screen would make my job a lot easier, because I have to jump back and forth to view things when updating other systems with information.” Chief information officer Brian Sloan is wishing for biometric member identification software, while CFO Dan McGowan said “any technological gadget and/or magic wand that will keep our ATM network up and running 24/7.”

Virtual Desktops and Geoclustering

In Palo Alto, California, Stanford Federal Credit Union’s senior vice president and chief information officer, Jim Phillips, said that in partnership with CDW the $1-billion credit union is hoping to build on 2012 by creating a best practice, top-tier technology environment. Phillips noted the 2013 wish list is in five parts: 1) Refreshing SFCU’s physical and virtual desktop environments and replacing one-third of its desktops, 2) optimizing and expanding its 3PAR storage environments for geoclustering, 3) continuing to deploy Cisco chat and video tools internally and externally, leveraging the unified contact center, 4) working with CDW to revise and expand the virtual call center environment, building on its Cisco UCS projects from last year, and 5) reviewing its network topology to improve resiliency and performance with Oracle RAC, 3PAR clustering, and VMware high availability deployments.

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