The Banking Executive Magazine - Septmber Issue 2021

be the right description of today’s sit- uation. Many IT Governance strategies need to be addressed including maintain- ing business continuity, identifying the best practices during and post COVID-19, establishing a balance between business survival, cost cut- ting, offering online services, looking for new technological ways to solve business issues, and driving the digi- tal transformation. The best approach to address all those pain points is to have an effec- tive IT governance framework, which balances the value delivery for business, the cost and the risks. There is a rising need to: • raise awareness and build a solid information and technology gover- nance. • drive the digital transformation by adopting a robust IT governance framework. • identify a clear vision of informa- tion and technology governance. • adhere to governance standards and their applications. • identify the most affected IT func- tions in post COVID-19 era to en- sure business continuity. This in- clude information security, and in- formation system development practices. IT GOVERNANCE TO EMBRACE THE NEXT GENERATION OPERATING SYSTEM The choice of next generation oper- ating system is an IT Governance challenge that banks and SMEs need to urgently address in order to ensure sound IT systems and infrastructures. The advent of Windows 11 is raising this challenge and motivating the ex- ploration of extant operating systems and their offering. With limited resources to SMEs and businesses and a tighter IT budget for banks, it is worth to shed light on Google Chrome Operating System (chromeOS), a rising next generation operating system. The sale of com- puters shipped with Google Chrome Operating System witnessed an un- precedented growth over the last pe- riod. As part of an IT Governance agenda it is worth to explore whether google chrome operating system may be the cheapest lightweight alternative op- erating system to adopt. Below we establish a comparison be- tween Windows 11 and ChromeOS that may help SMEs and banks in their future IT governance plans. This comparison is based on a Windows report that highlighted the following key differences and similarities: • User interface: Windows 11 and ChromeOS share many similarities in terms of visual appearance, and with the new Taskbar that is posi- tioned in the center, Windows 11 resembles ChromeOS. • Application support: ChromeOS started humbly, and in the begin- ning, the operating system was very web-centric and it worked only with Chrome extensions and web apps. However, the operating system got native support for An- droid apps, and now many Chromebooks can download and run apps from the Play Store. This was a giant step forward for ChromeOS and Chromebooks, and today many models can run Android apps. Chromebooks can also run Linux apps. ChromeOS is slowly becoming a full-fledged op- erating system. Windows is a much larger platform with more users worldwide, so most applications are specifically developed and optimized for Win- dows. While Windows 11 offers support for Win32 and Universal apps, a brand-new feature is the ability for Windows 11 to run An- droid apps natively. However, there are few drawbacks, and if we want to use Android apps natively on Windows 11, we need a proces- sor that supports Intel Bridge tech- nology. Windows 11 uses Amazon App Store, which means that there are fewer apps to choose from than on the Play Store. Amazon App Store offers less variety when it comes to the list of available apps, which can be a problem for some users. On the other hand, Chrome OS uses Google Play Store, so we ISSUE 153 SEPTEMBER 2021 the BANKING EXECUTIVE 21 IT Governance for Banks and SMEs