news Less than two months since its launch, downloads of the Kaching mobile payment app from Commonwealth Bank of Australia are going through the roof. With over 110,000 downloads and an app store rating of four stars, Kaching is the second most popular free finance app in the Australian App Store, after the company’s NetBank app, CommBank revealed this week.

CommBank had revealed its plans to launch Kaching in October 2011, describing it as a ‘peer to peer’ social payments strategy that is different from current legacy payments systems.

Erin King, from the Commonwealth Bank Press Office said that more than half of the bank’s 10 million customers presently own a smartphone, and have a high need for convenient and innovative apps. “The momentum this app has gained has been overwhelming, given we have taken a fairly soft approach to marketing it,” King stated. According to David Lindberg, the bank’s executive general manager of cards, payments and retail strategy, Australians are 65 per cent more likely than the British are to bank on their phones.

The combination smartphone application and associated hardware accessory allows users to make fast payments from their mobile phone to anyone via a phone number, email address or Facebook friendship, and to merchants through Near Field Communications (NFC). Apple approved the app in December 2011 and it is available through the company’s iOS App Store. Other similar apps include ANZ Bank’s goMoney system and Pollenizer’s Pygg (which uses Twitter for payments). All these focus on using social networking credentials instead of financial account details to transfer money.

More than 85 per cent of Kaching users prefer the mobile-to-mobile payment method; the company also reports a rapid increase in Facebook payments. Facebook is the second most popular transfer method with customers, representing more than 10 per cent of Kaching transfers. Besides using mobile phone, email and Facebook contacts, users can also pay others using BPAY billers and their NetBank address book. People who are not Commonwealth Bank customers need to have an Australian bank account to receive money paid to them through CommBank Kaching.

“While we knew Facebook would be an important feature to offer our customers, it’s an interesting growth area and indicates a distinct shift towards how Australians are seeking out new ways of making payments,” King explained. “It certainly broadens the mobile channels available and shows just how important it is to keep technology evolving for customers.”

Not everyone is pleased with the way Kaching functions. In October 2011, one of Australia’s leading privacy advocates, Roger Clarke of the Australian Privacy Foundation had expressed concerns about Kaching’s potential to take away the anonymity afforded by paying for goods and services with cash. Clarke had said that people such as VIPs, victims of domestic violence, celebrities, people in sensitive occupations, protected witnesses, and security and undercover law enforcement operatives would not want a complete payments trail collected by their financial institutions.

CommBank has promised that the first release of CommBank Kaching is just the start of the journey with a focus on evolving technology to provide the best customer experience.

Image credit: Still from a CBA video

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news The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has revealed plans to launch a new combination smartphone application and associated hardware accessory that allow customers to make quick payments from their mobile phone to anyone with an email address, phone number of Facebook friendship, as well as to merchants via near field communications (NFC).

Dubbed ‘Kaching’ to mimic the sound of a cash register draw closing, the app will initially launch on Apple’s iOS platform, although a version for Google’s rival Android operating system is in the works. However, the Apple version has not yet been submitted to Apple’s online store for approval.

According to a statement issued by the bank this morning on the new app, customers who download Kaching will be required to complete a “straightforward” registration process to use it, utilising their online NetBank login details. They will then select an account to both receive and make payments from.

The app will then allow the user to make payments to “anyone” via an email address, phone number or Facebook friendship. Depending on the format selected for payment, the bank said, the transaction would either take place instantly, or generate a unique code for delivery to the recipient, allowing them to access their payment online “at a convenient time”.

Because Apple’s iPhone line does not support the Near Field Communications standard (unlike a number of rival Android phones), NFC payments — or ‘tap to pay’ at merchant terminals supporting MasterCard’s PayPass standard — will take place through the addition of an iCarte case to customers’ iPhone handsets. The bank noted there were some 42,000 NFC readers currently installed around Australia. The iCarte case is only compatible with iPhone 4 and 4S models, while Kaching will require iOS version 4.3. ZDNet.com.au has reported the iCarte case will cost $40 or $50.

The app will also allow customers to check their balances and transfer money between their accounts, in addition to allowing bills to be paid through the BPAY system.

The app will be locked to only one smartphone handset for security, users’ passwords will be encrypted and no personal banking information will be stored on customers’ phones. In addition, all funds which are not retrieved through the system after 14 days will be credited back to the original payer.

CommBank is billing the app as a “peer to peer” social payments strategy that is differentiated from current legacy payments systems.

“This banking breakthrough marks a significant milestone in the evolution of how we pay and receive money from each other,” said CommBank chief information officer and group executive of enterprise services, Michael Harte. “CommBank Kaching joins our suite of apps and further validates our position as Australia’s most innovative bank and a world leader when it comes to digital development in financial services,” he added.

The bank’s executive general manager of cards, payments and retail strategy, David Lindberg, said the new app would reduce the reliance on traditional payment methods and simplify everyday payments.

“Mobile and online social payment is the next step in transaction technology,” he said. “Already, more than half our 10 million customers own a smartphone, and Australians are 65 percent more likely than the British to bank on their phones. Now, for the first time, Australian consumers will no longer have to rely on cash or cards to make payments to family, friends or even businesses. The recent explosion in uptake of digital and smartphone technology has revolutionised how we all transact, interact and communicate with each other, and this new application will make the dream of mobile payments a reality,” he added.

The bank has set up a registration page for customers who want to pre-register their interest in the service.

opinion/analysis
Along with similar apps such as ANZ Bank’s goMoney system and Pollenizer’s Pygg, Kaching represents (finally!) the eventual long-term deprecation in the use of cash in Australia. And it’s about time. With the technology that we have on hand today, there is simply no reason for consumers in first-world countries such as Australia to be paying cash for items or giving each other cash for small transactions. It’s simply much more logical for Australians to be tapping their smartphones or use an app for these kind of payments.

I suspect I’m not the only one who is tired of carrying around coins in their pocket … a monetary system which dates back several milennia.

However, there are also some potential privacy issues here. Kaching does something very nice for the Commonwealth Bank — it’s not just another service offering to customers. Used correctly, it will also place vastly larger amounts of data in the company’s systems than it previously had available to it. Every time a customer pays a mate for a coffee, forks out a few dollars for an item at a shop or chucks some spare change a charity’s way online through this system, it will now be able to be tracked, where previously it could not be.

It used to be that coffees with mates were private. It used to be that you could pay cash for something in a shop and that transaction wouldn’t be recorded against your name. It used to be that you could chuck some spare change into a charity’s bucket without the world knowing. Well, if CommBank has its way, this will be the case no longer. All of that valuable data will be saved and added to your transaction record.

I note that nowhere in this morning’s announcement was there a proposal that small transactions carried out by customers through Kaching be anonymised, as they currently are with cash. And yet, with many of the cashless cards available internationally, this is possible. The cards and transactions do not have ‘owners’ — they are simply used, as cash is.

With the release of Kaching, CommBank is making more than a play for customer loyalty and convenience. It is making a play to view the sum total of all of your monetary transactions — from birth to death. And that — in the wrong hands — would be an extremely dangerous thing.

Image credit: Still from a CBA video

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Australia and New Zealand Banking Group has given a series of tantalising hints about what technology projects have taken up its time over the past six months, in a half-yearly financial results session today which emphasised the bank’s strategy of focusing on investing on growth in markets in the Asia-Pacific region rather than Australia.

Unlike major rivals the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and the National Australia Bank, ANZ has not pursued a core banking overhaul project in Australia. Instead, in briefing documents today, it said over the past while it had continued to focus on core banking re-development in the Asian markets, as well as New Zealand, where its accounts will see a one-off NZ$98 million charge this half relating to core banking projects in the country.

The bank said its shift to a single core banking platform in the country was slated to drive operational efficiencies, improved services levels and other business outcomes – reflecting similar benefits which CommBank claims to have achieved with its own core overhaul in Australia. “Our move to a single core banking system later this year is progressing well and this will improve our ability to innovate and to serve our customers,” said ANZ NZ chief executive David Hisco. “This work is aimed at simplifying the way we operate and improving our customers’ experience.”

ANZ also focused on launching its cash management platform Transactive throughout Asia and in New Zealand in the half – which the bank has billed the first integrated cash management and paymanets platform across Australia and the Kiwi nation.

In Australia, the bank appears to have primarily focused on developing technologies which affect its end users directly, mentioning investment in customer-facing technologies such as development of its internet and mobile banking platforms, as well as the implementation of multi-lingual ATM machines, consistent with its strategy of becoming the Australian bank of choice for Asian migrants.

The bank’s iPhone application, goMoney, offers features which the other banks’ mobile apps do not – such as the ability to transfer money from customers’ accounts to non-customers directly, requiring just their mobile phone number. ANZ has also recently launched an iPhone app in Taiwan.

ANZ didn’t go into much detail about how its technology costs over the period were broken down. However, the bank’s overall “computer costs” rose 15 percent in the period (to $498 million) compared to the six months previously – an increase which the bank said was largely driven by increased contractor costs associated with technology projects.

The bank’s approach to technology projects – particularly core banking redevelopment – is markedly different from that of several of its rivals.

CommBank has placed its core banking re-development strategy at the heart of its drive to improve its operations, throwing more than a billion dollars at the project over the past few years and discussing the work openly.

In mid-March, Commonwealth Bank chief information officer Michael Harte held a wide-ranging briefing in which the executive and other CBA leaders repeatedly emphasised that CBA’s $1.1 billion revamp put it technologically between two and five years ahead of its rivals. Harte and others emphasised the real-time nature of the bank’s transactional capability, which the systems of most of its rivals do not share.

NAB is also undertaking a core re-development project, although the bank has spoken little in public about the matter over the past several years. Westpac is holding off from attempting a core overhaul – although the bank’s subsidiary St George already shares much of the real-time functionality that the CBA enjoys.

Image credit: Belinda Lester, Creative Commons

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Commonwealth Bank chief information officer Michael Harte this afternoon shrugged off rival NAB’s core banking overhaul as the “Jetstar” of overhaul projects, in a briefing in which the executive and other CBA leaders repeatedly emphasised that CBA’s own $1.1 billion revamp put it technologically between two and five years ahead of its rivals.

The CBA’s project was initially kicked off in 2008, with a projected value of $580 million, but has since almost doubled in size, with Harte this afternoon confirming its ongoing value was about $1.1. billion. Among Australia’s major banks, the only other bank to have initiated a similar core overhaul project is the National Australia Bank, which is taking a toe in the water approach, rolling out new systems at its fledgling UBank business first before extending them to other areas of its operations.

This afternoon, Harte (pictured) said no other bank in the region had a strategy similar to the CBA, other than the NAB, which had “a completely different strategy, akin to Jetstar”, which the CIO said would see the group create an alternative bank within its own operations – similar to how Qantas’ Jetstar subsidiary is functionally separated from its parent.

Harte and other senior CBA staff such as the bank’s chief executive Ralph Norris and the head of its core banking overhaul project, Dave Curran, went to lengths this afternoon in the briefing with media and analysts in an attempt to demonstrate how the bank’s billion dollar overhaul – one of the largest IT projects currently under way in Australia – gave it an edge over its rivals.

In a live demonstration, Curran showed the audience how the system’s new real-time banking functionality allowed customers to create new accounts, gain greater visibility over their transactions and transfer funds quicker (even with cheque deposits) than had previously been possible. He also demonstrated how the new system allowed campaigns to be run by the bank in a much simpler way.

“We are real-time, we are seven days [a week], the other banks aren’t,” said Curran later in the briefing, in answer to a question about whether the other banks’ slower systems were slowing down the processing of cheques between banks. “We would naturally like to see that change over time … we are held back by the other banks in this regard.”

The bank’s chief financial officer David Craig said he was often asked by investors what sort of head start the bank’s core overhaul had given it with respect to competing banks.

Craig said three years ago, the bank believed it was two years ahead of its competitors – as it had done several years of planning in preparation for the overhaul. “But that was three years ago,” he said, noting the other banks had not followed CBA in that time. “We don’t think we’ve got five years’ head start,” he said – but he added the CBA considered itself out in front.

CEO Norris said the bank was already seeing benefits from the project, with volumes of customer service calls dropping, positive comments from customers rolling in and the bank’s ability to roll out new financial products such as its new GoalSaver deposit platform being streamlined. In addition, Harte noted later on that the bank’s number of severity one technology incidents had dramatically reduced — down 94 percent from 2006, when it had 66 such outages.

However, Norris said it was over the next five to ten years that the biggest changes in the banking field would arrive. “Ten years from now, banking is likely to be very different from the way it is today,” he said, noting the next generation of customers “will not, and should not, accept systems built in the 60’s”, with “overnight batches and regular delays”.

Most of Australia’s banks are still running core banking systems based on mainframe technology which has been in place for decades – unlike the CBA’s new core, which is based on modern software from German giant SAP and was integrated with the help of IT services giant Accenture.

Harte said two years ago when the CBA embarked on the core overhaul project, many had regarded the program as being a risky endeavor, “for reasons of execution”. There were many examples around the world where core banking modernisation projects had failed, he said. However, the CIO said he believed today’s briefing would demonstrate that “execution is no longer in question” with respect to the CBA’s overhaul.

Governance
At the event, Harte and Curran fielded a number of questions about the amount of expenditure associated with the program, and the link to benefits accrued from the initiative.

The CBA has twice ploughed further funds into the project, initially raising its overall budget by $150 million after the bank acquired BankWest, and unexpectedly then topping up its funds with a further $370 million in early February this year. In February, the bank provided few details about what the extra money would be used for, citing only increased project complexity and the ability to add extra functionality to the project as justification for the increased funds.

Today, Harte defended governance controls on the project, saying the bank’s board of directors met quarterly to oversee the project, and monthly meetings were held with internal sponsors, with Norris himself chairing the monthly events. The bank was continuing to make ongoing investment in the project as added value could be returned, he said.

In general, Harte said his Enterprise Services division – which includes the IT portfolio in its responsibilities – managed around $1.8 billion worth of expenses each year, including technology infrastructure costs of around $650 million annually. The core banking modernisation project was expected to save about $300 million in total operating costs within a three year time frame, he said — and the bank was also expecting savings from its increasing move to on-demand infrastructure (both public and private cloud).

However, Harte also declined to go into detail on some areas. “I don’t think we need to manage the program in the public domain,” he said. “I believe our governance project internally is sufficient to maintain the commitment that we have.”

Analysts also questioned whether the CBA had opened the door for rivals to mimic its success, by going first in Australia and ploughing the way. The NAB has a relationship with SAP, while Westpac and its St George brand maintain strong links with CSC and its Hogan product.

Harte said the CBA had never had a contractually exclusive arrangement with its partners SAP and Accenture, but that by “defacto”, the bank had soaked up their best staff for its project, and had also taken “a lot of the available talent off the market” in general. “This is not something we’ve outsourced to a third party, it’s something we’re determined to do,” said Curran.

Curran added ANZ Bank chief executive Phil Chronican “could buy the SAP product tomorrow”, but putting together a crack team to work on such a project “takes effort”. “Everyone else who follows has to do what we’ve done, and it’s not easy,” he said, “to change the heart and soul of a bank while it’s still open.”

“Good luck to those who think it’s an automatic slam dunk,” said Harte. “We’re at least two or three years ahead of the others even if they were to choose SAP.”

Image credit: Commonwealth Bank of Australia

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blog The Australian Financial Review took another stab this morning (paywall) at digging some form of core banking systems overhaul strategy out of ANZ Bank, in an interview with Phil Chronican, the chief executive of the bank’s Australian business.

In it, Chronican reiterates the bank’s long-held position that no, it doesn’t need to overhaul its core banking technology (read: mainframes) and yes, the kids are alright (read: money is being spent to ensure internet banking remains up).

It’s a song that ANZ has been singing for some time, despite the best efforts of journalists and vendors to prod the bank into some form of massive technology investment. The second verse goes something like the bank is much more focused on investing in its Asian expansion than tinkering under the hood with risky IT overhauls that could give it engine trouble. Says Chronican:

“Core system replacements are very high risk and very hard projects, which is why most banks put them off for as long as possible … building applications outside of the core systems means you can effectively put off core system replacements for a very long time.”

There’s a reason the bank is so defensive. Over the past several years, Commonwealth Bank chief information officer Michael Harte and his superior officer, chief executive Ralph Norris, have been talking up the bank’s $730 million Accenture and SAP-backed core overhaul greatly. Terms like ‘real-time banking’ and ‘speed to market’ have been running rife. So naturally the other banks are feeling a bit under pressure to follow the CBA’s lead.

It’s a topic that also came up at the recent wide-ranging briefing held by Westpac tech chief Bob McKinnon, held days after the bank delayed its own core overhaul. McKinnon was at pains to defuse the CBA hype, pointing out Westpac subsidiary St George already had real-time banking, and there was much that could be done without it anyway.

Personally, I think the argument in favour of banks upgrading their core systems has not yet been made persuasively enough in Australia.

The CBA has been on a high-spending tech roadmap for the past decade — first with the CommSee project, and now with its core overhaul. But then, it needed to — it probably had the most archaic systems of any bank to start with. And why should all of the other banks play follow the leader if there are bigger problems that need to be solved?

I’d like to see the other major banks talk a bit more in public about this. It’s fair enough for the CBA to hype up its core overhaul constantly — when you’ve spent a pretty penny, you need to show something for it. But that doesn’t mean the other banks need to constantly sign up to the public narrative the CBA is creating for them — “core overhaul or not” is pretty much a false dichotomy — and even the Commonwealth Bank knows it.

Image credit: Belinda Lester, Creative Commons

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opinion I almost spilled my coffee all over my desk last week when I read the Commonwealth Bank’s annual report and discovered that its chief information officer Michael Harte had picked up no less than $4.2 million in remuneration over the 2010 financial year — a $1.4 million pay rise.

My first reaction was to call Harte and ask for an indefinite $50k loan for a trip to Miami so the Delimiter staff can lie on the beach interview so that I could ask him to justify how any one CIO could be worth $4.3 million in a year — the whole idea seemed preposterous to me.

I mean, sure, the dapper Harte looks good in a suit and generates constant good PR for the bank by threatening to keelhaul vendors and make them walk the plank if they don’t sign on to his cloud computing vision. And there is that little matter of the $730 million core banking IT overhaul he’s been steering for the past two years, without many glitches that we know of. But he’s just one man — even if he is a tough as nails Kiwi who supports the All Blacks.

The pay packet increase is particularly startling if you realise that it constitutes a rise of about $1.4 million — in 2009 Harte picked up the still amazing sum of $2.7 million. The difference in 2010 was mainly due to long-term incentive payments.

To most workers in Australia’s IT industry, Harte’s astronomical salary must seem remarkable. After all, entry level graduate IT salaries typically start around the $50k to $60k mark, and only gradually go up into the hundreds of thousands after you become a senior manager. The situation in the public sector is even worse — it’s not uncommon for a departmental CIO to earn less than $200k.

Of course, you can earn a lot more working for one of the big technology vendors, but Harte doesn’t — he’s an IT buyer, not an IT seller.

But the truth is that increasingly Australia’s private sector will be seeing more examples of highly paid chief information officers like Harte — and there’s a good reason why.

When Harte joined the Commonwealth Bank in 2006, his title was chief information officer, and he was in charge, of — well, d’uh — the bank’s technology support division. But since that time the high-flying executive’s role has changed substantially.

In October 2008 the bank went through a substantial reorganisation that saw a new division created — Enterprise Services — which Harte was appointed to lead, while maintaining his existing CIO title. Quoting from Harte’s CBA biography:

The Group formed Enterprise Services in October 2008 to enable an end-to-end service and process focus as well as accelerate the delivery of innovative customer solutions.

What this really means, when it boils down to it, is that Harte is no longer really just a chief information officer or technology executive — or, looking at it the other way around — that the CIO role in large Australian organisations is increasingly changing away from just being focused on IT.

You can see a similar trend in other large local organisations.

At ANZ Bank, for example, although the bank appointed a new CIO (Anne Weatherston) this year, it’s clear that ultimate responsibility for the bank’s IT systems rests with David Cartwright, the bank’s chief operating officer — including, for example, the bank’s offshore facility in Bangalore, India. Any major technology project is likely to involve Cartwright’s signoff.

It was Cartwright, after all, in his previous role as group managing director of operations, technology and shared services (along with a little help from deputy CIO Kieran Griffiths), that oversaw ANZ’s IT strategy in the year it took the bank to replace previous CIO Peter Dalton.

NAB chief information officer Adam Bennett likewise has a higher master — Gavin Slater, the bank’s chief executive of Group Business Services, who also lists technology among his responsibilities.

Bob McKinnon is lucky enough to run his own shop as Westpac group executive of Technology. But Qantas’ IT function has been for the past several years been led, by group executive of Corporate Services and Technology David Hall, with other executives such as head of technology Segar Reddy taking a low profile.

Hall publicly described himself in August 2009 as a “quasi-chief information officer”, and I think this title is an apt one to describe what the top level of IT executives at major Australian organisations often do these days.

Harte, McKinnon and co are paid millions of dollars each year not because they run IT infrastructure and make technology strategy decisions. The truth is the modern CIO role is evolving to become more akin to the head of operations in many organisations — with broad responsibility for ensuring that all aspects of a company’s systems meet operational outcomes.

This reflects the fact that the entire day to day business of many corporations consists of technology-related transactions. In 2010, banks are essentially just huge batches of datacentre racks with a few branch offices and call centre staff for support. Their main business doesn’t rely on technology. It IS technology.

In this sort of environment, two types of top-level executives will win out. The first will be those — like Harte — who take the step up from their IT roles and increasingly handle operational responsibility for their organisations. This is why Harte is being paid so much — he’s no longer just an IT chief.

The second will be those — like Qantas’ Hall — who subsume IT into their operational mandate. This sort of executive represents a danger to the traditional CIO, because they have the potential to take away much of the responsibility and power of the CIO role — as Hall did at Qantas.

Canny senior IT managers in 2010 will see this shift coming and prepare for it. It’s time to diversify and prepare to take the step up that Harte did at the Commonwealth Bank. The alternative is to be eventually relegated to obscurity due to your lack of foresight and diversified skills.

Image credit: Commonwealth Bank of Australia

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The Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s technology spend rose 12 percent over the past financial year to shoot past the $1 billion mark, with spending in almost all technology areas increasing and the bank as yet providing no explanation of the rise.

In its annual results briefing pack today, the bank revealed its total IT services spend over the year to 30 June had risen to 1,029 million — up from $921 million the year before.

Costs in the areas of application maintenance and development, data processing and communications services all rose, as well as the cost of amortising software assets and IT equipment depreciation. The only bright spot was the cost of desktop services, which shrank slightly.

Bank spokespeople have not yet responded to a request for comment on the rises, and the bank provided little explanation of where they came from. CBA’s IT operations are led by chief information officer Michael Harte.

However, CommBank is still in the midst of its core banking modernisation project and is also enmeshed in integrating BankWest’s systems into its own.

The project was initiated in April 2008 as a four-year, $580 million initiative to overhaul the bank’s ageing legacy systems with the aid of Accenture and SAP. In August last year, CBA tipped another $150 million into its budget to bulk up some sub-systems, as well as extending the platform to subsidiary organisations.

In its presentation today, the bank said the core banking modernisation project was “on track and delivering”, with all customer information migrated onto the platform, as well as its more than one million term deposits.

It is planning to shift its retail deposit accounts onto the new platform by the end of 2010, and its lending deposits by mid-2012. After that it will integrated the operations of BankWest and ASB in New Zealand onto the new core banking system.

Harte has recently been attempting to publicly drive a strategy of inter-bank cooperation in an attempt to force powerful vendors into changing their attitude towards cloud computing — a technology which has the potential to offer organisations a chance to take costs out of their IT infrastructure spend and make their delivery arrangements more flexible.

Image credit: megawatts86, Creative Commons

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In this interview with iTnews, Commonwealth Bank of Australia executive general manager of service support Nick Holdsworth talks about the company’s cloud computing infrastructure and what it means for the bank. Further information is available in an extensive iTnews article on the subject.

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New Australia and New Zealand Banking Group chief information officer Anne Weatherston has poured cold water on those hoping her recent ascendancy to the bank’s top technology role will open the door for outsourcing opportunities.

“I’ve dealt with many outsourcing deals, not a big fan of outsourcing,” said Weatherston in response to a question at an event yesterday morning held by Enterprise Irland.

“You really ought to know what are the core competencies you want to retain inside your organisation,” the CIO added. “What is it they are doing, what are they better doing at … once you’ve got that in your supply chain of the requirements then relate that to buying that sort of service from that vendor.”

The comments represent the first hints that Weatherston has given in public about how ANZ’s technology might or might not change following her appointment, after she commenced work in mid-February. The bank took over a year to replace its former CIO Peter Dalton, after he was reassigned within the bank.

ANZ is not known to have historically had major IT services outsourcing contracts, but it does operate its own substantial offshore facility in Bangalore, India, where it has been steadily increasing its headcount over the years — with the number expected to be more than 3,500 currently.

In addition, the bank does do some outsourcing in the area of telecommunications — in May 2009 the company inked a $500 million deal with Optus for managed telecommunications and network services.

Enterprise Ireland’s panel event also features a number of other figures in Australia’s technology banking sector — David Curran, executive general Manager, Commonwealth Bank of Australia; Bruce White, CIO, Greater Building Society and Mark Chimes, partner, Performance & Technology, KPMG.

Curran used an analogy when asked on how the CBA handles its partners and what are the lessons that it has learned. “We use the analogy of the bridge of the ship — at the end of the day CBA is captain of the ship,” he said, adding: “We support the navigation, we support the engineers, we support all the aspects of running the ship.”

“It is vital for a third party to recognise that they are going on to our bridge of our ship.”

Weatherston said in response to the topic: “I think its pretty much about what you are looking for, they’re not going to be a pirate ship, but they’re a supplier.”

When the topic of outsourcing was fielded to the panel Curran was also quick to express his feelings about the controversial topic, saying: “Outsourcing deals are long gone … I think you can’t hand your problems to someone else.”

On another matter, cloud computing — a popular topic of conversation amongst CIOs at the moment — Weatherston said: “We’re very interested in it … Looking at more HR-type services and desktop-type services, I think that it’s a real possibility for the future.”

When asked by the floor “Do you think initially it will be your cloud or the vendor’s cloud?”, Weatherston replied hesitantly: “It will be our cloud initially, yes.”

Curran said, “I think the concept cloud that everyone is talking about, if you break it down the whole cloud is here and now virtulisation we will absolutely go for.”

He went on to say, “The answer is there, looking at it resources in the cloud we have to be looking at that direction potentially will be part of the future … A direction that would definitely be a part of the future. I think a maturity on the supply pipe, we’ve got a long way to go.”

Image credit: Kym McLeod, royalty free

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The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has told staff it will shortly be upgrading their desktop browser from version 6 of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer software to version 7.

The bank has been running on IE6 for a number of years as part of version 3 of its desktop standard operating environment (SOE). However, it emailed staff recently to let them know they could look forward to IE7 as part of SOEv4, which is to be rolled out progressively from March. CBA has about 38,000 staff in total.

IE7 is a more modern browser than IE6, introducing new features such as the tabbed browsing made popular in rival browsers like Firefox, an anti-phishing filter and enhanced support for web standards. Microsoft reworked a number of core areas for IE7′s release — such as the rendering engine and the way the software handles security.

However, IE7 was released in October 2006 and has since been superceded by version 8 of the Microsoft browser, which was released in March 2009. Internet Explorer 9 is currently in development.

The bank may not be that unusual when it comes to what would be likely to be percieved by many consumers and early technology adopters as a slow approach to upgrading its browser technology. For example, a report by research house Forrester found in May 2009 that 60 percent of companies still used IE6 as their main browser at that point, with IE7 pulling in a respectable 39 percent at that point, and Firefox sitting at 18.2 percent.

It’s understood CBA needed to test a plethora of applications for compatibility with IE7 before starting to rollout the upgrade — a common problem in certain sectors, such as in financial services and some areas of government.

There have been relatively few high profile deployments of Firefox within Australian corporates, although it is common to hear anecdotal evidence that users are requesting the open source browser be installed by IT departments.

The bank’s new standard operating environment will be again based on Windows XP, although CommBank is testing Windows 7. In April 2009 the bank had said it had examined Windows 7, but was yet to formally test what was then the beta version of the software. The final version of Windows 7 was released late last year.

One further upgrade to make it into the new SOE will be welcome in some of the bank’s branches. It’s understood a lack of modern broadband connections into some locations had made delivering online video based on Adobe Flash an issue. The bank had previously disabled the software in certain situations — such as if a branch was using an old ISDN connection for internet access.

However, it will now enable Flash across its operations following gradual network upgrades to bring the old connections up to speed. A CommBank spokesperson said the bank had “nothing to announce” when asked to comment for this article.

Image credit: Microsoft

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