blog Remember in May 2011, when we broke the news that Westpac confirmed it would finally shift off IBM’s troubled Lotus Notes/Domino platform, in favour of an organisation wide shift to a hosted version of Microsoft Outlook/Exchange? Well, it appears that shift isn’t going too well. iTNews reports today (we recommend you click here for the full article):
… the bank has decided to “defer the project until a later stage.” Sources told iTnews that Westpac CIO Clive Whincup and CTO Jeff Jacobs, both installed in late 2011, ultimately took the decision after a group-wide review of ICT priorities.
Presumably this means that the bank’s tens of thousands of staff will remain on Notes for the forseeable future — and that those working for the bank’s St George subsidiary will remain on Novell GroupWise. Fantastic.
Does it seem to anyone else that things have started to unravel in Westpac’s IT department since mid-2011? The bank’s superstar chief information officer Bob McKinnon steps back into a more limited role, the bank kicks off widespread offshoring initiatives that are hitting its Australian headcount, it confirms it’s still running Internet Explorer 6, chief technology officer Sarv Girn exits stage left and from our point of view the bank doesn’t have a long-term plan for dealing with its ageing core banking systems … a situation St George, for example, dealt with quite some time ago.
Furthermore, in this morning’s Financial Review, McKinnon’s replacement Clive Whincup is quoted as saying there is “little demand” from staff for the bank to implement so-called Bring Your Own Device computing policies, despite industry analysts flagging BYOD as one of the hottest trends in current enterprise IT thinking, and fellow financial services giant Suncorp going headlong down that path.
All of this is dramatically different from the road paved with gold vision which McKinnon was selling technology journalists in October 2010. At that point it looked like Westpac was poised to start challenging CommBank for the crown of Australia’s most technologically progressive financial services group. Today it is increasingly looking like that title might go, ironically, to NAB — historically one of the most conservative of Australia’s top banks. Ironic. From my point of view it looks like Westpac is now heading full steam ahead into cost-cutting mode when it comes to IT.
Westpac’s decision on its unified collaboration platform does also raise a number of questions about the bank’s capacity to deliver. This should not have been that complex a project in the grand scheme of things. It uses standardised software from the Microsoft stack, and was slated to be implemented with the help of several gold-class IT services firms — IBM and Fujitsu. It would have brought uncounted productivity benefits to the bank. If Westpac can’t get this kind of ‘basic hygiene’ IT infrastructure project off the ground, how will it go trying to implement the much more ambitious core banking overhaul projects which are going on at CommBank, Suncorp and NAB?
Image credit: Winam, Creative Commons
Another way to read this – If IBM and Fujitsu can’t get this kind of ‘basic hygiene’ IT infrastructure project off the ground…
I think you will probably find it was the ‘cloud architects’ who said it was going to be so easy, so much better, so much cheaper – happily ignoring the complexities which are woven into the business structure of any company larger than a recruitment agency or a real estate agent. You really need to prepare your internal IT systems first to be “cloud ready” so that they can be neatly incised from your onpremise IT environment.
Then when they come along to hard facts and details, their cloud vision evaporates and you start getting “time and materials” and “managed services” and the $$$ pile up…
Thateus
You have obviously been here before.
Given westpac’s experiences with IBM and lately Fujitsu, Westpac ae clearly very slow learnes.
Of all the companies I ever did work at, Westpac was the one to prove to me that Dilbert is based on fact and not entirely fiction. They have by far the worst IT processes and management I have ever encountered in my near 20 year IT career. Some of what I encountered there is so outlandish that people don’t believe me!
From what I’ve seen and heard, nothing has improved over the years; the beast has simply continued to grow. The only way for them to come out of the forest is to either A. adopt the systems acquired from St. George (remember that St. George originally bought Advanced Bank in part because of their cutting-edge IT systems) or B. literally build a parallel environment from scratch. Of the two choices, I believe that B. is the stronger one but no one at Westpac has the willpower or…gusto to make and enforce such a decision much less to commit to such an overwhelming project. Overcoming that level of entropy is just too big a risk for anyone on the inside to undertake.
Banking sector seems to think innovation is directly related to what you can outsource. One of the attractive aspects of St George buyout was its technology and IP. Fundamental fail by westpac was to not manage culture change and have a BEP (Bozo Explosion Prevention) programme. Complex environments do poorly with technology because people are threaded into its use more so than smaller orgs. Westpac and even IBM have trouble getting good ideas moving past the back wash of incompetent people that block innovation.
“Banking sector seems to think innovation is directly related to what you can outsource.”
Not always — this isn’t the situation at CommBank, for example, which seems to outsource basic stuff and then work internally on innovative stuff (with the help of some external parties), or at Suncorp, which has always appeared very internally focused. But yes, in general I agree somewhat with your premise.
Totallly agree!!, after the big cost cutting overhaul.
Sadly to tell you that the incapable “IT management” groups still remain behind to manage the groups. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks
I work @ IBM for a International bank Europe based and we have a private cloud within the bank implemented by IBM (see us here :-) we have also already implemented BYO bring your own device. Just sounds like Westpac is not internally aligned/organized enough to plough ahead with the end goal being crystal clear and selling buy in across the board or quite possibly they have a new solution in mind we all don’t know about ;-)))
I am ex-IBM and worked on both the Westpac and NAB accounts. I can tell you with absolute certainty the only failure on Westpac’s part was signing with IBM.
Seems IBM are able to do massive migrations around the world and make many billions in revenue though Westpac doesn’t appear to be a good project….anyway without knowing all the details all of this is mere speculation. Maybe we should invite the CIO, CTO and CEO to comment from Westpac. To be more clear about this i work for myself as a contractor to IBM and un-named Euro bank :-) for the past 7 years and yes IBM can suck at times then again so do most corporations with people inside them who think they know IT but who are soon sold off into some platform/application slavery. Also is there any comment Anon on the working practices at Westpac as described by Michael who stated: ” Of all the companies I ever did work at, Westpac was the one to prove to me that Dilbert is based on fact and not entirely fiction. They have by far the worst IT processes and management I have ever encountered in my near 20 year IT career. Some of what I encountered there is so outlandish that people don’t believe me!”
As you worked there also can you provide any input on this as i might be tempted to then come home and take some of that business :-)
Westpac does have a bad rep as a place to work as an in-house IT staffer — places like CommBank and Suncorp have better reputations at the moment. But I’m sure there are good patches. Bob McKinnon is a good IT executive and no doubt drove quite a bit of positive change in the bank in the past few years.
Why did they hire IBM to move them off IBM’s Lotus Notes/Domino and on to Microsoft’s Outlook/Exchange? I know IBM will do anything you pay them to, but really, can you honestly expect them to put their best people onto this project?
IBM GSA are involved here. They provide services and will do what the customer demands. GSA’s Messaging collaboration team have more exchange admins than domino admins here in Australia. Nothing bad about it, they’re just following trends. But I suspect that the tide is changing. I know of another site suffering a reality check about migrations and common sense is prevailing and a very hush-hush about it. Many of these migration propositions don’t bear the financial fruit as propose on paper. Asking a business to go from system “A” to system “B” for the same functionality has to have strong business case. Reality may be proving otherwise.
IBM does admin software from a bunch of other vendors — not just their own gear. They are more than capable of working with Exchange.
things must be tough at westpac if they’re replaced office chairs with camping chairs and the canteen has been moved to the local park.
:P
I do need some more Westpac stock images :)
“This should not have been that complex a project in the grand scheme of things. It uses standardised software from the Microsoft stack, and was slated to be implemented with the help of several gold-class IT services firms — IBM and Fujitsu. It would have brought uncounted productivity benefits to the bank.”
@renaiLemay obviously you should be CIO or CTO of westpac because you know it’s so easy in organisations with 35,000+ employees, and no one builds complex apps in the 10+ years that Lotus Notes has been onsite. They must all be discussion database templates. Mail and app migration is a cinch. The previous “C” level officers must have been totally incompetent. ;)
I take your point, but there shouldn’t be many reasons why you couldn’t continue to run those Lotus Notes apps (of which I have no doubt there are many) separately, while still migrating the core messaging and directory functions to Exchange/Active Directory etc.
I would bet most within the bank don’t much use the bespoke apps you’re talking about and spend much more of their time in email etc. It’s the same at most organisations.
Making a lot of assumptions of a very large environment. I have bashed out a few apps for westpac years ago, and they have very specific needs. They have a mix of “bespoke” and core elements to them. Some apps managed by a handful of people, but are available to the whole organization. Local administration but large impact. These are “replaceable”, some others are just hell-in-a-hand-basket to re-work. Also, a very sophisticated intranet system built over the years which are hard to replicate out-of-the-box. It integrated beautifully with mail and other apps. Once you start messing with the Eco system and satrt customization of vanilla solutions would probably have poor ROI.
Mail is a relatively commoditized service which is usually a fire-and-forget option for migration, but they have an issue with keeping archived email for the mandatory 7 year time frame. They were heavily invested in an ibm product for mail archiving that handles vast amounts of data, daily and worked closely with IBM in making it work. In fact it was one of the things IBM provided very good support for as far as I could tell. It was certainly easier to get stuff done there than other banks.
> there shouldn’t be many reasons why you couldn’t continue to run those Lotus Notes apps
> (of which I have no doubt there are many) separately, while still migrating the core messaging
> and directory functions to Exchange/Active Directory etc.
Great. So now you’re paying for two email systems but you’re using only one of them. You may save a little on desktop support costs, but nothing on licensing I’m afraid.
I sure wouldn’t want to be the one explaining *that* piece of financial wizardry to the shareholders.
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