**:Light Finance Author: Li JingbianThe exponential growth brought by new technological innovation to all walks of life is accelerating. "Technological progress in every field has seen exponential growth like Moore's Law, and these technological breakthroughs are superimposing on each other, and the speed of scientific and technological innovation has naturally accelerated greatly. The book "The Future is Roaring" points out. In the financial industry, new technologies are also accelerators for exponential effects. As an important support for the development of banking business, the core system is "nuclear power", and it is also an important project with huge space for new technological innovation. The core system of the bank has developed for more than 30 years, from manual to PC era, from data concentration to the explosion of financial technology, and the power of new technologies has been engraved at every stage. Nowadays, banks are entering a new era of new core reconstruction, and building an enterprise-level technology architecture with independent innovation is becoming the top priority of more and more banks' transformation. In the era of digital intelligence, digital and intelligent transformation is becoming a new track for banks to build core competitiveness, and "digital intelligence" emphasizes the combination of digitalization and intelligenceHow can this lead to better innovation and growth?
The "new core" choice of banks
If calculated from the 2013 Internet + sweep, the wave of financial technology development of banks has gone through ten years, which is a magnificent history of scientific and technological innovation, and now the annual investment scale of information technology in the banking industry has exceeded 100 billion yuan.
Driven by IT architecture transformation and independent innovation, banks' investment in technology is still growing rapidly. According to IDC, the banking IT solutions market is expected to continue to grow, reaching 2,212 by 20267.6 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 112%。Among them, in terms of software and services, the distributed transformation of core business systems and other fields are still the key areas of IT solution investment in China's banking industry. In fact, it has taken a long time for banks to embrace the transformation of distributed architecture, but the core system area is considered to be "the most important and the most difficult to localize", which is a key indicator to measure the success of banks' fintech transformation. At present, the "new core" of banks still faces multiple challenges in moving from "digitalization" to "digital intelligence", including the slow speed of product iteration and innovation, the lack of self-mastery capabilities, the lack of ability to cope with massive and high concurrency, and the slow speed of iterative innovation. In the traditional "simple system" thinking construction of banks, there are still four typical problems: demand management, industry and technology integration, architecture planning, and agile R&D. For example, the system is fragmented and repetitively constructed, the system construction lacks the "one game of chess" thinking, the business and technology lack an intermediate "bridge" or "unified language", the business needs are insufficient or updated in a timely manner, and large-scale development and other problems and challenges still need to be broken through. Ideally, the core system of the bank can be reimagined by a physics. The human brain possesses "wisdom", which is believed to be due to the coincidental permutations and combinations of "God's magic". If this logic is built on top of this, the core system can create its own "God's magic".Divide modules, build different competence centers, prefabricated building blocks, and banks can build their own building blocks according to their needs, and finally form a system that responds quickly to market demand. Among them, supporting the rapid evolution of digitalization with intelligence is an important part. However, in practice, banks need to make changes in many ways in order to break through the dilemma of "new core" restructuring. In the face of complex new core construction, it is difficult for banks to go it alone, and more and more banks are selecting the best paths, cooperating with third-party vendors, and getting sufficient technology and capability support to reduce costs and increase efficiency. These technology vendors have been forward-looking enough in terms of the development of fintech and the insight into the needs of banks. Sunline Technology, which continues to evolve in the field of new core systems, has always been an innovation benchmark in the industry. Recently, Sunline Technology has launched an innovative banking core system product - Digital Intelligence Core Overall Solution. As we all know, thanks to the rapid development of artificial intelligence and other technologies, the time for the bank IT system to move from "digitalization" to "digital intelligence" is very short, and upgrading is imminent. 
The Sunline Digital Intelligence Core Overall Solution, which conforms to the general trend of artificial intelligence, is composed of a set of implementation processes, a set of cloud-native digital productivity technology bases, and application design assets and technologies based on the implementation process guidance research and development, which is a deep collision and integration of "data" and "intelligence". On top of the digital base, the process is standardized through innovative processes to form asset precipitation. One of the important links is to add a large model, use precipitated assets to train the large model, and form an intelligent assistant to improve the efficiency of process operation, and ultimately accelerate the construction of new application systems. "A good core should meet the needs of the unknown. Li Hongguang, executive vice president of Sunline Technology Group, said that while supporting the ability of unlimited expansion, it is necessary to deconstruct the logical relationship between businesses, such as the logic and mutual cooperation between businesses, and build "building blocks" of core components to achieve innovation and growth. The ability to assemble building blocks is the key capability to be built in the new core of the bank. In this regard, Li Hongguang further explained that first of all, it is necessary to have a deep understanding of the bank's strategic positioning and business demandsSecondly, we will continue to improve our own innovation capabilities, use the latest financial technology and digital intelligence technology to better serve the financial business of banks, and help banks complete the transformation and upgrading from digitalization to digital intelligence. Therefore, the restructuring of the new core of the bank is a huge systematic project, and it is necessary to build an enterprise-level architecture from a strategic level. Based on this consideration, Sunline Technology started from the top-level design of the enterprise architecture, carried out the overall planning and layout of the core system and even the bank-wide structure, and proposed three major breakthrough points to promote the bank to improve demand management, industry and technology integration, architecture planning, agile management and excessive investment in the early stage. The first is to shift from "chimney construction" to "overall planning", and build a clear, sustainable and unified enterprise-level architecture from a top-level perspectiveThe second is to shift from "function building" to "capacity building", and build capacity building such as enterprise-level shared reuse and flexible assemblyThe third is to shift from the "extensive traditional R&D model" to the "standardized lean R&D model", carry out demand structuring, and pay attention to analysis and design. A good new core system of a bank not only needs to innovate in technology and change in thinking, but also needs to have a forward-looking vision for the future.
Break through from modeling methods and process innovation
"How is the value of IT assessed?”
This is a question that bank CIOs are often asked. The calculation of a bank's IT input is simple and straightforward, but the value of the output is difficult to estimate. Therefore, in the process of reconstructing the new core, the quality of demand and the integration of industry technology have become two aspects that banks are paying more and more attention to. In recent years, with the rapid development of financial technology, the infrastructure construction of banks has taken shape, but there is still no better way to "integrate industry and technology". Due to the different "language" systems of business and technology, business systems and technical systems are often two skins, which are difficult to integrate, and it is difficult for banks to share and reuse resources to meet expectations. Breaking through these problems from business modeling and innovative implementation processes has become the direction that Sunline has actively explored in recent years. Taking business modeling as an example, on the one hand, it can unify the "language" of business and technology and improve the efficiency of "industry and technology integration".On the other hand, enterprise-level assets have advantages in scalability under standardized language, which can support the system expansion needs of future business innovation and reform, that is, the precipitation, preservation and iteration of assets. One of the highlights of Sunline's core overall solution is that it is driven by the implementation process. "It used to be possible to produce a car, which was generated by hand, but now it is generated by an assembly line. Zhang Mushu, President of Sunline Technology R&D Center, described that "the reform of the process on the assembly line" is the biggest difference between Sunline's core overall solution and the previous version. Specifically, the implementation process "starts from user needs and ends with software", providing a complete set of processes, methods, templates, and guidelines from business requirements to implementation and delivery for the bank's modeling needs, and supporting corresponding tools. This solution covers all aspects of the software life cycle, ensuring end-to-end, modeling, and standardization of requirements, and ensuring that IT applications undertake business models in a complete, correct and detailed manner. 
The innovation of this set of implementation process comes from Sunline's landmark project implementation experience in large state-owned banks, and has been polished and optimized to open up all links from project requirements to delivery to asset iteration. Because this innovative implementation process is from the perspective of enterprise-level architecture, it can reduce the deviation of the bank's strategic objectives and ensure that the IT system completes and correctly undertakes the business modeling results. With the expansion of the advantages of business modeling and implementation technology, another major advantage of Sunline's core overall solution is the construction of enterprise-level assets, and the continuous promotion of the standardization and structural transformation of bank assets. Facing the future, having an excellent, high-quality, and digital enterprise asset management system is the key for banks to continue to build their competitiveness in the future. At present, the vast majority of banks do not have perfect corporate asset management, and most of the banks with corporate assets have failed to form a standardized and digital asset management system. In the construction of enterprise-level assets, business model assets have received more attention from banks, which structure natural language in the modeling process, and then use modeling methods to integrate with technology, so that the enterprise-level assets of the whole process, standardization, structuring and preservation can be observable and traceable. This is mainly based on Sunline's years of experience and knowledge in serving the core system of banks, which can save banks from building enterprise-level assets from scratch, which requires a lot of manpower and material resources. A bank once commented on the construction effect of Sunline's enterprise-level assets, "reading ** is like reading **, it is a kind of enjoyment". In summary, business modeling and innovative implementation processes will bring more far-reaching value to banks. First, productivity promotes changes in the relations of production. In the process of integration of industry and technology, it is necessary to have a department or secondary department with business capabilities and technology architecture familiarity, so that the original separation of business and technology can be relatively buffered. Second, the value of the asset can be maximized. The construction and preservation of enterprise-level assets plays a key role for banks, which determines whether the bank's current assets can be continuously iteratively used in the future, and can also break the bank's over-reliance on personnel. The ability to reuse can maximize the value of assets and keep the business model and IT model consistent throughout the lifecycle. In addition to business modeling and innovative implementation processes, a set of automated adaptation tools can improve efficiency. Sunline Technology integrates the method of implementing the process into the tool, and opens up the system of asset quality inspection and management operation and maintenance. That's the power of structuring and standardization.
One base: a cloud-native digital productivity platform
The reconfiguration of the new core system of the bank is inseparable from a good technical foundation, which is the key to improving the core "productivity".
Under the trend of independent and controllable banks, Sunline has independently developed a cloud-native digital productivity platform (APSTACK platform for short), which can create a new digital technology base for financial institutions and improve the adaptation efficiency of banks to build new core systems. The platform provides tools and technical components covering the full lifecycle management of requirements, analysis, design, development, operation, testing, and operation and maintenance, and consists of six parts:
Sunline's APSTACK platform has six parts
The first is the process platformIt integrates business modeling, application analysis and design modeling, and coding modeling functions, carries the enterprise-level value delivery process, carries out business modeling, application analysis design and development, and ensures the continuous precipitation and preservation of assetsThe second is the development platformOne-stop application development and management, relying on development tools and intelligent generation capabilities, it can realize the rapid development and full life cycle management of applicationsThe third is the public mechanism: Encapsulate the reusable capabilities in the business scenario into a common mechanism and provide them to application developers in the form of technical components to achieve capability reuseFourth, the runtime platform: Focusing on the runtime architecture of financial core applications, it can adapt to a variety of cloud platform components and provide runtime support capabilities for the "unitized & distributed & microservice" architectureFifth, the operation and maintenance platform: Focus on the financial core unitized distributed and microservice convergence architecture, and provide scenario-based operation and maintenance solutions for the first use and platformSixth, standard test application: Oriented to the typical scenarios of financial core, combined with the test application designed and developed by the process metamodel, it is used as the standard test application and application development example of the platform. The unitization feature of the Apstack platform can help banks achieve three layers of distributed, architecture governance, and disaster recovery11 productivity tools that provide full lifecycle management capabilities for applications to help developers improve quality and efficiencyThe process undertakes enterprise-level architecture planning, and the platform undertakes the implementation of process to realize the integration of industry and technology.
"Today, the IT system of a bank is not an isolated realization of a requirement for the sake of a requirement, but can still be implemented quickly in the face of the unknown future needs of the bank. Li Hongguang believes that this is the overall idea of the current bank's new core system construction. Of course, Sunline's APStack platform is not only limited to the core system of the bank, but can also rely on it to quickly provide solutions when facing the needs of other aspects of the bank's IT system.
After reaching the summit of "Tarzan".
In 2013, Sunline Technology landed the first J**A version of the bank core system in China, and launched the first distributed core system in China in 2015.
Based on the bank's practical pain points and needs for the construction of the new core system, Sunline Technology established the "Taishan" R&D project internally at the end of 2021. The core overall solution of Sunline Digital Intelligence, which has been launched for many years, is the beginning of the "Taishan" project. For Sunline, the core system of the bank is very important to itself, and it also shows the complexity and arduousness of the project, which requires a difficult process of climbing. In two years, hundreds of people have invested in the cooperation of more than 100 different types of financial institutions in the core construction practice, forming a new set of party and tool platform system and process, and forming a complete set of solutions for this set of methods and implementing new processes. Innovative implementation processes, sorting out and building enterprise-level assets, building a base, and creating a set of automation tools all require the courage to build an enterprise-level architecture and a forward-looking strategic vision. In terms of team, Sunline Technology has a large team serving the core applications of state-owned banks, joint-stock banks and head city commercial banks, and has a wealth of modeling and process experts, and its service banks have strong industry advantages. 
In addition, Sunline Technology also has a strong financial cooperation ecosystem. As of the end of June 2023, Sunline's coverage of all banks with assets of more than RMB500 billion has exceeded 96%. At the same time, it has also formed a good technical cooperation ecology with financial technology manufacturers in the industry. There is a tiger in the heart, sniffing the rose. After reaching the top of "Mount Tai", Sunline's new competitiveness is also growing. At present, Sunline's digital intelligence core overall solution has been gradually implemented in leading joint-stock banks and city commercial banks, and its effect has gradually become prominent. The comprehensive adaptation capability of information innovation can cover all independent and controllable product lines. For example, it helps a city commercial bank to build a new generation of core systems, which will completely replace the existing foreign core systems, including deposit and loan business and full-featured core business of corporate and retail, which can meet the bank's diversified business needs. At present, the bank's new-generation core system can support high-concurrency big data processing and stably handle the business of 100 million-level accounts. "Complex deconstruction and simple transformation", the new core of the future-oriented bank has been evolving, and the transformation of the bank's IT system is also a long-distance race with no end. According to IDC Financial Insights**, global IT spending in the financial industry (including software, hardware, and IT services) is expected to reach $800 billion by 2026. This means that the banking industry's fintech investment will continue to grow. In the long history of development, the core system of banks has been constantly evolving, and in the face of the "roaring future", the "new core" and IT transformation of banks will continue to run for a long time. Fortunately, a number of third-party manufacturers have joined in this long-distance race, which provides forward-looking support in terms of technology and concept. Innovation knows no bounds. Sunline Digital Intelligence Core is not only a set of core system solutions, it also points to the new development model of the bank's continuously iterative IT system, and is also a "big killer" linking the future: through the insight into the future, innovative ideas and implementation processes, and a complete set of frameworks to ensure the advancement of the bank's IT system. In Sunline's view, the future of enterprise-level asset construction is a clear direction for intelligent programming and AI model evolution. This is because the basis for the evolution of intelligent programming and AI models is that computers can read and understand the assets of enterprises, while the assets of current banks are difficult to be understood by computers. With the support of the innovative implementation process platform, the enterprise-level assets built by Sunline Technology naturally have the native consistency of natural semantics and computer logic, as well as the characteristics of structure, high quality, digitalization, and iteration, which are easy to be accurately accepted and extended by computers. In the future, Sunline will explore and implement process assistants based on large models to provide various auxiliary capabilities for design and development states, assist in demand analysis, assist in the generation of **, assist in the generation of test cases, etc. The intelligent process assistant will definitely improve and enhance the capacity, efficiency and quality of the entire production line. This is the digital and intelligent future of Sunline's core and the future of the IT system of the banking industry.