This trend is particularly evident in developing nations in Asia (85 million mobile accounts) and Africa (58 million mobile accounts), where mobile phones have emerged as a means of extending financial services in lieu of an underdeveloped banking system.
This new dimension in enterprise computing-- extending mainframe governance to POWER7 and System x blades integrated into the zEnterprise System architecture--was developed over the past three years with direct involvement from a team of IBM's 30 top customers, which provided direct input at every stage of the development process.
By ditching its longstanding rule about lending only to commercial banks and extending this facility to investment banks, the Fed is in effect admitting that it faces a different sort of financial system one in which dealers pose as much of a threat to stability as lenders.