ATM Manufacturer Quickly Creates ATM

Management Solution Using Cloud Resources

Overview “By developing Conductor in Microsoft Azure, we were

Customer: Diebold
Industry: Financial services
Customer Profile
Diebold is a global provider of integrated
self-service and ATM solutions, security
systems, and services. Diebold does
business in more than 90 countries.
able to get it from concept to pilot very quickly—in
about three months—and position it for equally quick
adoption, both of which are critical in the competitive
branch transformation market.”
Devon Watson, Vice President, New Business & Solution Incubation, Diebold

Business Situation
Diebold wanted to help clients—financial Diebold, one of the largest global providers of automated teller
institutions—migrate routine transactions
from the branch teller line to in-branch machines (ATMs), created a tablet-based application called
self-service terminals. Conductor that bank branch personnel use to monitor ATM
Solution usage. Diebold developed and runs Conductor in Microsoft
Using Microsoft Azure as a development Azure, which helped Diebold meet its three-month time-to-
and hosting platform, Diebold developed
an ATM management application that market target and gives Diebold an easy way to introduce the
lets branch personnel monitor ATM app globally. Conductor gives financial institutions a low-cost,
usage and health status from a tablet or
smartphone. easy-to-use tool to help transform their branches by migrating
more transactions to self-service terminals.
Benefits
 Introduce new services faster
 Expand business globally with lower
costs
 Help banks cost-effectively transform
branches

“We wanted to give
branch personnel better
insight into self-service
transactions so that they
could both monitor
operations ... and help
customers use more
complex transactions.”
Devon Watson, Vice President, New
Business & Solution Incubation, Diebold
Situation
Even though automated teller machines
(ATMs) have been around for decades and
offer an expanding set of financial services,
many bank customers prefer to stand in a
teller line and talk to a person. While that
preference is understandable, it represents
a big problem for Diebold customers in the
finance industry that are eager to shrink
branch size and costs.
“All of our customers are engaged in
branch transformation projects aimed at
transforming their branch networks to be
more cost-effective while better promoting
their products and services,” says Devon
Watson, Vice President of New Business &
Solution Incubation for Diebold. Diebold is
one of the largest global manufacturers of
ATMs and provides associated self-service
software and services in addition to
physical and electronic security solutions.
Diebold is based in North Canton, Ohio,
employs 16,000 people, and sells its
products in more than 90 countries.
Diebold wanted to help customers with
their branch transformation efforts by
introducing new user interfaces and
terminal form factors specifically for the
branch environment. Many banks have
already moved ATMs into the branch so
that bank staff is nearby to help customers
and drive adoption, but Diebold knew that
it could do more to remove the barriers
that kept some consumers from migrating
to self-service.
“Diebold has always been known for
innovation, and we’ve been at the forefront
of user experience research,” Watson says.
“Our consumer studies tell us that users
prefer self-service, but sometimes need
help adopting. We wanted to give branch
personnel better insight into self-service
transactions so that they could both
monitor operations, such as cash levels and
device health, and help customers use
more complex transactions. This is critical
for financial institutions that seek to drive
more transactions into self-service
channels.” Branch personnel could not
stand over customers’ shoulders and watch
them; they needed remote insight into the
consumer’s ATM experience.
Whatever solution that Diebold came up
with, it wanted to get it to market quickly,
as the branch transformation area is quickly
evolving. Diebold was also eager to market
new solutions in other global markets,
including key developing regions in Latin
America and Europe but did not want to
burden customers with heavy IT
infrastructure requirements.
Solution
Diebold came up with a number of branch
transformation solutions, one of which is
Diebold Conductor. Conductor is an
application that runs on the Windows 8
operating system and gives branch
personnel real-time insight into ATM
transactions. The ATM runs a small piece of
agent software that communicates terminal
and user session information to Conductor,
which is a highly visual, touch-enabled app.
Handheld Insight into ATM Health and
Usage
Conductor shows a branch manager or
other bank employees a stylized picture of
each ATM in the branch along with a quick-
glance green, yellow, or red health
indicator. The employee can tap on
individual ATM images and see the status
of specific subsystems in the ATM such as
cash dispenser, receipt printer, and check
acceptor. Branch personnel can create
alerts for notifications that they care about,
such as low cash or low receipt paper.
When the ATM is in use, the branch
manager can see the customer’s name and
the amount of time that he or she has been
at the terminal and engaged in a particular
transaction. Branch personnel can set a
notification to alert them if a customer has
been using the terminal for an unusually
long period of time, which could indicate
that they are stuck at some point in the
transaction and need help. There’s also a

“Using an Azure-hosted
development model was
a great way to speed up
the development cycle.
There was very little
friction in transitioning
our staff to Azure,
because our Microsoft
.NET-trained developers
could continue to use
Visual Studio.”
Richard Harris, Vice President, New
Technology & Incubation, Diebold
button on the ATM that customers can
discretely push to ask for help.
Branch personnel can walk over to the ATM
and help the customer through the
transaction and use the face-to-face
encounter as an opportunity to teach the
customer how to use other ATM functions.
Knowing which customer is at an ATM also
gives branch personnel the opportunity to
personally greet high-value customers.
Developed and Hosted in the Cloud
Diebold developed Conductor, and hosts it,
in Microsoft Azure, a public cloud
environment that provides virtual compute,
networking, storage, and high-level
platform services for developing and
hosting applications in Microsoft
datacenters. “We needed Conductor to be
mobile, so the branch manager could use it
while wandering the branch, and we
wanted the app to be as lightweight as
possible, requiring as little software as
possible to be downloaded on the various
endpoints,” Watson says. “The best way to
achieve both objectives was to host it in
Azure.”
The Diebold research and development
organization has long used Microsoft
software, such as Microsoft Visual Studio
development system, so Azure was a logical
extension of the tools and processes that
developers already knew. “Our goal in the
New Business and Solution Incubation
group is to be very agile in bringing new
concepts to market,” says Richard Harris,
Vice President of New Technology &
Incubation at Diebold. “That’s hard to do if
you have to set up new infrastructure every
time you start a project or create a pilot
program. Using an Azure-hosted
development model was a great way to
speed up the development cycle. There was
very little friction in transitioning our staff
to Azure, because our Microsoft .NET-
trained developers could continue to use
Visual Studio.”
Creating Conductor took two Diebold
developers just two months. A few key
customers then reviewed the app and
provided feedback. Diebold launched the
beta app for pilot availability in June 2014.
Conductor consists of a software agent that
runs on the ATM and collects session data
and feeds it to Azure. This data includes
device health and status, ATM cash levels,
user identity, and where the user is in the
transaction. This information is fed into web
services that run in Azure Websites, where
Conductor applies rules about transaction
length and other information. If transaction
length exceeds the set timeframe and
action is required from branch personnel,
the app backend uses Azure Notification
Hubs to send a push notification to the
employee tablet or smartphone. The app
uses Azure SQL Database to store all the
data coming from the terminal agent.
On-Premises or Hybrid Cloud
Deployment Options
Customers can run Conductor in the Azure
datacenter closest to them, in their own
datacenters, or in both using a hybrid cloud
model. Larger banks may choose, or be
required, to run some Conductor
components on their own servers while still
taking advantage of Azure services such as
Azure Notification Hubs to facilitate
communication between their servers and
the tablets in the branch.
Benefits
By creating Conductor in Azure, Diebold
was able to complete the product within
three months and can similarly accelerate
future development projects. By hosting
Conductor in Azure, Diebold relieves both
its own organization and its customers of
heavy infrastructure requirements and can
more easily market the product globally.
Conductor gives financial institutions a way
to migrate more consumers to ATMs and
transform their branch models.

“Conductor has the
potential to help
financial institutions
shrink teller traffic by 50
percent, which is huge
for our customers.”
Devon Watson, Vice President, New
Business & Solution Incubation, Diebold
Introduce New Services Faster
“We want to be able to roll out new
services as quickly as possible to global
customers, and the best way to do that is
with a cloud-enabled development and
hosting model,” Watson says. “By
developing Conductor in Microsoft Azure,
we were able to get it from concept to pilot
very quickly—in about three months—and
position it for equally quick adoption, both
of which are critical in the competitive
branch transformation market.” Diebold
was relieved of the time and expense of
setting up development, test, and
production server infrastructures, which
was readily available in Azure.
It also eliminated the need to build and
maintain a push notification infrastructure,
which can be complex and time consuming.
“The use cases for Conductor place a heavy
reliance on real-time notification to keep
branch personnel aware of status and
session alerts on their terminals,” Harris
says. “Azure Notification Hub provided the
key ingredient of a single source for cross-
platform notification management.”
Since launching Conductor, Diebold has
begun other development projects in
Azure. “Azure is a speed-to-market enabler
and our development platform of choice
going forward,” Watson says.
Expand Business Globally with Lower
Costs
Diebold is using Azure to simplify customer
deployment, IT operations, and regulatory
issues, and expects that these changes will
help the company to expand its business to
new corners of the globe. “Hosting new
services in Azure gives us a very efficient
way to expand in different markets with
PCI-compliant datacenters that all function
the same way,” Watson says, referring to
the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data
Security Standard, an information security
standard for organizations that handle
credit and debit cardholder data.
Diebold enjoys improved competitive
advantage because of its ability to focus on
delivering innovative ATM services rather
than on managing infrastructure. “Neither
we nor our customers have to deploy a
massive server infrastructure to run Azure-
hosted products, which accelerates
adoption,” Watson says.
Help Banks Cost-Effectively Transform
Branches
Conductor gives financial institutions an
easy, low-cost way to migrate customers
out of teller lines to in-bank ATMs and
eventually to out-of-bank ATMs. “Many
branch transformation initiatives are ’heavy
lifts,’ involving significant time and cost,”
Watson says. “Conductor gives banks
something that’s ‘bite-sized,’ with a low
barrier of entry that lets them immediately
get going with a helpful branch
transformation tool.”
The financial institution gets better visibility
into terminal health and status and can
proactively assist customers and identify
customer engagement opportunities. The
consumer gets personalized help from
tellers when they need it, yielding smoother
transactions and opportunities to learn new
ATM services.
“Reducing teller traffic is the linchpin of
everything in a bank’s branch model—
physical branch size, staffing requirements,
and operational costs,” Watson says.
“Conductor has the potential to help
financial institutions shrink teller traffic by
50 percent, which is huge for our
customers.”
For More Information
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In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada
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For more information about Diebold
products and services, visit the website at:
www.diebold.com
This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published July 2014
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