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November/December 2016 // PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL //
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ers who are happy. All of this being achieved while remaining a
highly secure environment.
This evolution did not just happen. It had to be managed and con-
trolled. Standards had to be set, maintained, and providers had to be
accredited. This had to be done in a democratic way, ensuring that
no single organisation could veto something that all the other par-
ticipants had agreed upon. It needed a trade body to take control of
the process and define its own outcomes. It also needed to be nimble
—this is the kind of initiative that can be hampered by indecision,
self-interest, and over-weight committees.
And all of this has been done by the banking industry who were
trying to achieve the same thing as lotteries are today with the API
initiative. Lessons have been learned, experience gained, best practice
defined. As a set of foot prints, that’s pretty good!
At Abacus we would advocate following the foot prints left by the
banking industry. Building a large, closed system would not be evo-
lutionary. It would create as many issues as it solves, perhaps more. It
would require some organisations involved to co-operate where the
default position is to compete with one another, just like it would
have done if the banking industry took this route. The trail has already
been blazed, issues faced, and solutions found.
• Use open APIs, not a “Systems Solution”
• Deploy an open architecture—allow stake-holders to define what
works for them
• Define the interface definition and standards
• Define security requirements
• Define business rules and an operating framework
• Create an industry body to manage the standards going forward
• Create an accreditation process
• Create an open process for gaining accreditation
• Create an open environment to allow vendor competition
• Enable vendor independence
• Define what needs to be done, not
how
it is to be done
Finally, going back to the table we discussed earlier, we said that
twenty years ago the banking industry would have looked just like
the lottery industry. So is it going to take us 20 years to get to the
same place? We can’t answer that for sure, but what we can say is that
Abacus is delivering connectivity in Holland today, using an API, al-
lowing 2,000 retail stores to sell lottery tickets directly from 12,553
EPoS tills. Abacus has been on this journey for a while now, and some
of us have already been there whilst working in the banking industry.
So Abacus would like to help show you the way!
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E-Mail Simon Butler at
s.butler@abacus-bv.comKey Requirements/Drivers
High level of security
Resilient
Quick response time
Easy & cost effective to implement
Existing retailers’ requirements and infrastructure
Flexibility
Openness
Vendor Independence
Banking
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Lottery
✓
✓
✓
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