Financial services firms have been on the leading edge of technology adoption for decades, starting with the pneumatic capsules you can use at drive-up bank windows to make deposits or withdrawals, followed by credit cards starting in 1950, and the automated teller machine in 1967. The innovations since then have only accelerated as technology has evolved.

While many feel like we’ve been talking about

Before the 1970s, and this is actually very hard to imagine today, it took at least a day for a transaction to register in a bank account, because each bank branch had its own servers. The data from each branch wasn’t synched until the end of the day, after all transactions had been completed. As mainframes and telecommunication capabilities became more available, banks were among the early adopters of these technologies, revolutionizing that paradigm.

These changes created what we now refer to as core banking. Core (

We had a great time at Red Hat Summit this year, speaking to hundreds of attendees. Part of what we wanted to learn at the event was who was there, what they were interested in, and what was the biggest priority for their organization going forward. We learned a lot, and we’re happy to share the results with everyone.

First of all, who visited our booth? Well, in short, all kinds of wonderful people visited our booth and took the survey (and brought home a sock monkey)—