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Mint.com: Acquisition illustrates paradigm shift to cloud-based services

Release Date: 10/30/2009

After launching just two years ago, personal finance site Mint.com was acquired last month by Intuit, makers of quicken, quickbooks, and turbotax. Why would a successful software company dole out this chunk of change to own a company outside of its traditional product categories? It seems to suggest Intuit's recognition of a changing paradigm - consumers are demanding personalized, convenient, accessible services ... and as consumers go, so do businesses.

It's our opinion that the growing popularity and subsequent acquisition of Mint.com reflects a pattern in the financial services technology arena, with some distinct trends in technology adoption:

• Platform-based integration: the Mint.com platform, through a series of protected connections, aggregates account information from users' disparate bank accounts so they can be viewed from one interface.
• Intelligent reports: the platform aggregates data and massages it into easy-to-understand reports that help users track their spending, compare it to budgets, and create alerts so they can make more informed spending decisions.
• Automation: based on simple settings, the data integration, reporting, and alerts are completely automated, so the account activities fit seamlessly into the user's lifestyle.
• On-demand access:  the account information is accessible at any time from any web interface, and while automatic account updates are conducted nightly users can initiate updates any time for real-time, comprehensive financial views.
• Easy to use: mint.com's set-up is simple and intuitive and requires little or no management after initial set-up ... it just works.

HEIT CEO Dan Holt believes this trend is contributing to the steady growth of heit's cloud-based managed services adoption.

"Financial institution executives are looking for the same conveniences and efficiency in their business operations as they are in their personal financial dealings - they want to go to one spot to get the right information at the right time in a way that's easy to understand. that's why integrated managed it performance, compliance, security, and overarching strategy are so appealing ... they're affordable, easy, and they just work."

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