news Another one of startup incubator Pollenizer’s portfolio companies has raised a significant amount of investment capital to expand its operations, with social payments company Pygg today revealing it had taken $600k in funding.

The company, launched over the past year, allows users to make payments to others if they have their Twitter account or email. It is seen as one of the chief rivals to other local social payments companies launched by the Commonwealth Bank (Kaching) and ANZ (goMoney).

In a media release today, Pygg said it had raised $600k within six months from a number of investors, with founding investors including Yahoo!7 chief Rohan Lund and his Seven Network colleague, Vividwireless Tim Howard and Pollenizer itself. Pollenizer had revealed in November that it had added a further $1.1 million in investment to its own coffers, after last raising $500,000 in December 2010.

That round of capital (Pollenizer’s statement here) came from a number of new investors, including Tasmania-based Andrew Spykes, Lend Lease chief executive Anthony Pascoe and Hitwise founder Adrian Giles, as well as Adrian Stone from new Melbourne-based startup incubator Angel Cube. In addition, a number of previous investors — listed in detail on Pollenizer’s site — have also allocated extra money to the company. Most — such as the founders of Australian software company Atlassian — are well known in the Australian startup community.

Today, Pollenizer co-founder Phil Morle said investor enthusiasm had been high for Pygg “in a way we have not seen before”, and the Pollenizer team was very proud of the demand it had seen from “an impressive array of investors”. “It signals a renewed energy in the local startup investment community and supports our view that Pygg has great things ahead of it,” Morle added.

The investment will allow Pygg to grow and develop its operations to support other popular social networking platforms such as Facebook. Pygg is also currently partnering with organisations such as UNICEF Australia to encourage charitable donations. “The success of this funding round is a great vote of confidence in Pygg’s ability to drive change in the social payments space.” said Tim Howard, Founding Investor. “Pygg is in a unique position to adapt and respond to the market – delivering a product that is people-focused, bank-agnostic and fun to use.”

opinion/analysis
To be honest, I’m not sure I agree with the Pollenizer crew and Pygg’s investors that the company has a big future ahead. I’ll explain why.

Pygg’s social network payments are brain-dead easy. You simply add funds to your Pygg account via PayPal, and whenever you want to pay someone via Twitter or similar, just include Pygg in the transaction, and it will go through. You would think that the sheer ease of use (the company also has an iPhone app) would ensure that it would be popular. And of course, it’s good that it’s bank-agnostic. Plus, Pollenizer clearly understands how to send stuff viral, if the incredible growth of Spreets was any indication.

However, the service launched a while ago, and I’ve only seen a very limited amount of adoption in Australia’s Twittersphere (known for being early adopters). I’ve seen a few Pygg Twitter messages fly by from time to time, but often by people who actually work at Pollenizer or in the broader startup community — not the wider Twitter population that I spend all day with.

In contrast, and probably because of its vastly increased scale, I’ve seen a stack more activity and interest around the Commonwealth Bank’s Kaching application. I know a lot of people who already use Kaching and don’t want to go back to traditional methods of sharing cash with people they know and casual acquaintances.

In addition, I’m puzzled as to why Pygg doesn’t yet support Facebook payments; this would seem to be a brain-dead addition to its functionality that should have been there straight away.

My gut feeling is that the Pollenizer team has been stretched a bit thin when it comes to the development of Pygg. The growing company has a lot on its plate, with quite a few portfolio companies on the go simultaneously. In addition, I think it may have bitten off a bit more than it can chew when it comes to the highly regulated financial services space … you can’t just start a new payments company in Australia without knowing a lot about the regulatory environment and how to comply with it.

I wonder what the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority thinks about Pygg, for example, and what Pygg thinks about APRA and its often-draconian rules?

My second gut feeling about Pygg is that while it will achieve some scale over the next year, it won’t become a viable company in its own right. I would say that instead, it would be much more likely to be acquired by an Australian financial services company who wanted a ‘turnkey’ solution to social payments. It might even be possible for Pygg to develop a whitelabelled solution in this space, as Pollenizer did with the Dealised business whose technology drives Spreets. If Pygg took this route it could licence its technology to any financial services company — or even companies in other sectors (I’m thinking the retail sector might also be interested).

It’s always interesting watching Pollenizer. The company issues sporadic announcements once every few months, and you get the feeling that there are about 50,000 individual things which have happened in that intense environment which have, tiny iteration by tiny iteration, led to that small announcement.

One further thing is interesting to note here: The involvement of Seven Network figures Lund and Howard with Pygg.

Remember back in 2010, Pollenizer-backed Spreets was sold to Yahoo!7 (a joint venture between Yahoo and the Seven Network). Now we see senior figures from that portfolio of companies (Seven owns Vividwireless) acting as founding investors with Pollenizer in another transactional-type company. At the same time, Pollenizer last week announced a wide-ranging collaboration with APN News and Media, following a small investment APN made in Pollenizer portfolio company Friendorse.

In short, what we’re seeing here is several of Australia’s largest media companies beginning to use Pollenizer as a seeding ground to pull innovation out of that can then be injected back into their own larger, much more constrained and monolithic organisations. What will happen with Pygg eventually? Will it end up being acquired, as Spreets was before it, by Yahoo!7? And what does all this collaboration with big companies mean for Pollenizer?

It’s a topic that Morle, co-founder Mick Liubinskas and their merry band have clearly been thinking deeply about.

“We spent 2011 in talks with a number of media companies and explored all kinds of models. They all seemed too hard, and pulled our process too close to how media companies work today. A direction, we felt, would compromise our ability to succeed,” Morle wrote on Pollenizer’s blog last week. “In the middle of 2011 we started discussions with the team at APN and found our ideal partner for prototyping a new model for corporate innovation that works. We have now announced our pilot projects. This feels like an important step in the development of our ecosystem.”

Morle makes the point, and it’s a good one, that minnows like Pollenizer need to partner with big companies in order to quickly build scale. But I think — and Morle and Liubinskas clearly know — that Pollenizer will need to be very, very careful in how it engages with these giants, who could squash it at a moment’s notice — say, if there was a dispute over who owns what intellectual property that ends up in a lawsuit. Pollenizer is very disciplined and ‘best practice’ in how it handles such matters, but it can also be very fast and free at times. Innovation needs that.

One thing I do know: Pollenizer probably needs to remain largely independent from any of the major players to continue doing what it does best: Bottling and marketing innovation. If it gets dragged in too far with any one player, they will attempt to suck the value out as fast as possible and stifle that creativity.

In any case, Pollenizer is probably the most interesting company in Australia’s technology sector right now, and certainly the one I most admire. I will be continued to be fascinated with how things evolve, and I wish the team the best of luck.

Image credit: Laihiuyeung Ryanne, Creative Commons

news The long-serving leader of German software giant SAP’s Australian business, Tim Ebbeck, has unexpectedly resigned, with the company currently conducting an executive search to find a replacement.

The company revealed Ebbeck’s departure in a brief statement issued yesterday afternoon. “Tim Ebbeck (ANZ MD) has resigned after eight years with SAP – the last four of which he served as leader of the ANZ business,” it said. “Tim made a significant contribution to SAP’s growth in Australia and New Zealand, and has indicated he’ll be taking an extended break after many years of hard work, before embarking on his next endeavour.”

“SAP has extended its appreciation to Tim for his contribution to the business over the years, wishing him every success for the future. We are currently undertaking an executive search to find a suitable replacement. Shane Grobler, chief operating officer, SAP ANZ will act as country manager in the interim.” The resignation is believed to have taken effect last week on Friday 6 January.

Ebbeck’s LinkedIn profile states that he joined SAP as its local chief operating officer in February 2003, after a lengthy history as the South Pacific (including Australia) chief financial officers of Unisys and Compaq. He was appointed as the local CEO and managing director of the company in January 2008, following the departure of then-local chief Alan Hyde. Immediately prior to the role, Ebbeck had been senior vice president and chief commercial officer of SAP’s Asia-Pacific and Japan division.

Ebbeck’s time leading SAP has seen it make some major wins in Australia. The highest profile was probably the German giant’s success in breaking Australia’s core banking IT market wide open through winning a substantial deal which has seen its software placed at the heart of the Commonwealth Bank’s core banking replacement project — an initiative which has a total value of over $1 billion. SAP is working on the project with partner Accenture.

However SAP has also recently signed deals with a number of other players — the National Australia Bank for one, as well as companies like Goodman Fielder, Fortescue, AGL Energy and government departments such as Queensland Rail and the Department of Defence.

Perhaps SAP’s biggest issues in Australia during the period have been the ongoing payroll systems debacle at Queensland Health, which has seen many public servants go without their pay for periods. However, a report into the effort made no specific mention of SAP — blaming the problems primarily on poor governance within the State Government rather than the software used for the project.

SAP Australia’s other major struggle during the period has been fighting off the challenge posed to its market share (along with Oracle, SAP dominates much of the business software market) by Software as a Service players like Salesforce.com. SAP has traditionally preferred the on-premises deployment model, but over the past year has taken its first steps into SaaS or ‘cloud’ hosted applications in Australia, courtesy of partnerships with companies like Oxygen and Fujitsu, and even launching its SaaS Business ByDesign product locally in August last year.

During his tenure as leader of the company’s local arm, Ebbeck has taken a relatively low profile; declining a number of interview requests and rarely appearing before the media.

Perhaps his most memorable appearance in public came in March 2011, when the executive broke ranks dramatically with other leaders in Australia’s technology sector, declaring Federal Labor’s National Broadband Network project a “wasted investment” because it doesn’t focus on wireless technology. “Frankly, I am tired of all the discussion being focused on the broadband network,” said Ebbeck at the time. “It is not the most important of these infrastructure requirements, as supportive as I am of ubiquitous broadband with a strong wireless focus. I contend that water and transport infrastructure are the top priorities out of the list of seven.”

Ebbeck’s comments appeared to fall in line with other comments he has made regularly on his Twitter account, sharply criticising major Labor initiatives and the Greens while praising Coalition figures such as Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull and NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell. Ebbeck has been especially vocal in his opposition to the Labor policy popularly known as ‘the carbon tax’.

The executive’s sometimes blunt style in commenting on issues on Twitter has also occasionally earned him sharp rejoinders from other figures — such as San Francisco-based tech analyst Ray Wang, who asked Ebbeck who he was, after the SAP MD told the analyst he was planning to stop following him on Twitter due to “too much personal rubbish” being posted.

It’s not clear just yet what Ebbeck’s next move might be. However, the executive has set up a new company, Ebbeck Holdings Pty Ltd, as well as changing the name of his Twitter account. “Embarking on move from PC to Mac … hmmm … brave?” he wrote yesterday.

Image credit: SAP

news The Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s ‘Kaching’ mobile payments app has been approved by Apple and is now available through the company’s iOS App Store, the bank said this afternoon.

Kaching is a new combination smartphone application and associated hardware accessory that allows customers to make quick payments from their mobile phone to anyone with an email address, phone number or 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.

Customers who download Kaching will be required to complete a fairly 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 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 iCarte case is only compatible with iPhone 4 and 4S models, while Kaching will require iOS version 4.3. The iCarte case is to cost $54.95 (including postage) and is available to order through the Kaching app directly. 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.

David Lindberg, Executive General Manager Cards, Payments and Retail Strategy, said the arrival of Commbank Kaching heralded the beginning of “a new and exciting journey” in mobile payments and NFC technology. “Commonwealth Bank is delighted and proud to lead innovation in this space, delivering a world-first app that we believe will help to transform the industry,” said Lindberg in a statement this afternoon.

“The anticipation and appetite for this app has shown that Australia is one of the earliest adopting markets in the world. We’re confident Commbank Kaching will become the most popular banking app in Australiam” he added. Some 18,500 people had pre-registered to download Kaching when it became available. “This is just the first step in an evolving journey. Commonwealth Bank plans to roll out regular updates, with further enhancements and functionality of Commbank Kaching in the coming months.” Lindberg added.

Along with similar apps such as ANZ Bank’s goMoney system and Pollenizer’s Pygg, Kaching represents a growing interest in the use of payments technology in Australia which do not directly require users to directly transfer money into each others’ accounts; focusing much more on social networking credentials than financial account details.

Image credit: Still from a CBA video

blog On the blog of local cloud computing startup Ninefold, the company’s managing director Peter James raises an interesting question — does Australia need a cloud computing visionary to really push the nation’s cloud computing journey forward?

In the US, James points out, the Federal Government’s whole of government chief information officer, Vivek Kundra, drove a ‘cloud first’ policy which significantly changed the way the country thinks about cloud adoption. Kundra has resigned now, of course, but the effects of his vision continue to be felt, with the UK Government now following. Writes James:

“With the US and now UK examples, surely its time to call in the cavalry and have Australian governments follow this lead. Without federal, state, territory and local governments playing a leading role there is a real risk that the innovations and investments made by Australian ICT companies will not be enough to prevent Australian cloud from lagging further behind. Cloud computing adoption in this country is calling out for some real leadership. Where is our own Vivek Kundra going to come from?”

From my perspective, we do have a couple of high-profile IT executives in Australia who have been pushing the cloud message strongly. Commonwealth Bank chief information officer Michael Harte is probably the most prominent of those, but Westpac’s Bob McKinnon has also been making the case for cloud.

And although his company Altium is a much smaller player, fellow CIO Alan Perkins has also been extremely vocal about the cloud in Australia, both through his prolific writing on the topic, as well as speaking in public and demonstrating how cloud computing and software as a service can be used in the enterprise.

I would argue that other thought leaders would include CSC Australia chief technology & innovation officer Bob Hayward and Fujitsu chief technology officer and executive general manager of marketing Craig Baty. Both obviously have a barrow to push from the vendor side, but they also both have extensive past histories in the analyst community. I have found their cloud knowledge and awareness of the Australian marketplace to be second to none.

Do we need a more concerted effort from CIOs, vendors, government figures and so on on the cloud? Do we need Australia’s own Federal Government CIO, Ann Steward, to make some sort of dramatic ‘Cloud First’ statement? Personally, I’m not sure.

I think much of what James is talking about with respect to the cloud in Australia refers to the cloud at “The Peak of Inflated Expectations” on Gartner’s hype cycle. Cloud First sounds great in practice … but like any artificial imposition on technology projects, it’s not something that will be held to in practice — and if it is, it has the potential to be harmful.

Do you go “outsourcing first”, “on-premises first” or “open source first”? No. For each technology implementation, you look at the best option overall to suit your needs. You don’t arbitrarily pick a technology — you pick a solution. I’m not sure whether cloud is still at that obnoxious hype cycle peak in the US. But in Australia, cloud computing has definitely entered at least Gartner’s Trough of Disillusionment state, and it’s possibly heading back up to the Slope of Enlightenment and Plateau of Productivity where the best long-term outcomes can be found.

In this light, in my opinion, Australia probably doesn’t need the sort of cloud computing visionary which James is discussing — cloud computing adoption in Australia will probably get there more pragmatically from now on, without this kind of leadership. I’m sure James, as the leader of Ninefold, would like everyone in Australia to sign up to the cloud hype as much as possible. But I think he is destined to be disappointed ;)

Image credit: Fred Fokkelman, royalty free

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

news The Australian Taxation Office has joined the throng of Australian organisations confirming plans to finally ditch Microsoft’s legacy Windows XP operating system and adopt Windows 7, in a move that will also see the agency’s employees finally freed from decade-old web browser Internet Explorer 6.

When Windows 7 was first released in 2009, the ATO played down any plans to migrate to the new operating system, with the agency stating at the time that it had not at that stage started planning a Windows 7 upgrade. The ATO maintains one of the nation’s largest desktop PC and laptop fleets, with a count somewhere between 23,000 and 30,000. However, the agency confirmed last week that it was “progressing” an upgrade to Windows 7, as well as deploying Microsoft’s latest Office 2010 productivity suite at the same time. Delimiter believes the rollout will take place over the next six months.

One key aspect of the rollout will be the decision by the ATO to finally migrate off Microsoft’s legacy Internet Explorer 6 browser. The software giant has been strongly encouraging its global user base to dump IE6 for some time, as it was first released back in 2001 and does not support a number of standards critical for using the modern Internet as well as applications delivered through a web browser as a service.

A number of Australian organisations have hung on to IE6, however, due to the need to support internal applications that rely on it. The Department of Defence, for example, only upgraded to version 7 of the browser in mid-2010, and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia shifted earlier the same year.

The ATO will also participate in Microsoft’s ‘Home Use Program’ associated with its Office 2010 software. The program allows employees at supporting organisations to buy a full copy of Office 2010 for just $15.

It is likely that the support of US diversified technology giant Lockheed Martin will be critical to the ATO’s Windows 7 upgrade. The agency had previously supported its IT environment through a comprehensive technology outsourcing arrangement with HP’s Enterprise Services division (which contains the bulk of its acquisition of IT services outfit EDS), but signed a new contract with Lockheed Martin in mid-2010 for the support of desktop PCs and other end-user computing services.

The contract encompasses the provision of support to desktop PCs and equipment, offices machines such as faxes and printers and associated back-end infrastructure. A service management centre – including a single point of contact service desk for IT and service management issues – will be provided to the ATO.

The news comes as research emerged last week in a Forrester report sponsored by systems integrator Dimension Data that Australian organisations were increasingly looking to deploy Windows 7 — despite the fact that Windows 8 is close to reaching production. One of the other major Windows 7 rollouts is expected to be the desktop consolidation project at the Federal Department of Human Services, the new super-department formed through the merger of Centrelink, Medicare and other agencies.

In addition, news the nation’s largest telco Telstra last week confirmed it is currently in the midst of one of Australia’s largest known rollouts of Windows 7, in an initiative which will eventually touch most of the company’s 40,000 staff.

opinion/analysis
With the ATO and the Department of Human Services converting their desktop PCs and laptops to Windows 7, I expect the rest of the Federal Government will follow suit and migrate over the next 2-3 years. In my opinion, this may also be the last major wave of desktop software upgrades to take place in the public sector. There is simply no way that departments and agencies will upgrade to Windows 8, 9 or 10 any time in the next decade, after having conducted such massive Windows 7 upgrades more than a decade after Windows XP was released.

Microsoft will need to generate a massively compelling business proposition down the track to get major organisations to migrate off Windows 7.

Image credit: Matt Aiello, royalty free

news ANZ Bank chief information officer Anne Weatherston has delivered a landmark speech outlining her belief that revolutionary technological change is coming to the global banking sector and the steps – from changing business processes, systems and even human approaches – that she believes will be required to address it.

The traditional relationship between banks and their customers, Weatherston told a lunch of the Committee for the Economic Development in Australia in Sydney today, was the provision of basic bank accounts which allowed customers to save and borrow money. Hence, the fundamental platforms which underly banks are the general ledger systems – often referred to as core banking platforms.

“For a long time,” the CIO said, “this was the only system of necessity.”

Relationships between banks and customers had traditionally been personal, Weatherston said. Branches were the primary channel and risks – for example, issuing a loan – were calculated based on direct knowledge of the individuals or businesses concerned.

However, Weatherston pointed out that this relationship had changed over the years. Banks moved to a more proactive sales model and gained scale, relationships with customers became more distant and new channels – for example, the Internet banking systems we enjoy today – emerged. Banks also diversified their products into many areas of financial services.

Many of the new business demands ended up being “hard-wired” into banks’ core platforms, Weatherston said. Others were implemented as front-end systems interfacing with the core – this, for example, is how modern Internet banking systems function. However, for all that this approach had facilitated many of today’s banking outcomes, Weatherston said she believed it would need to dramatically change.

“It will not be possible to overlay these new business approaches on legacy IT systems”, she told the audience “While at the heart of all bank systems the core transaction system is still a necessity, new systems will be required to enable 21st century service propositions, real-time data, including transactions, and high levels of service efficiency derived from end to end automation.”

“The reality is that the cost of maintaining hard-coded, legacy applications with inflexible or non-existent process automation continues to rise, while the ability to deliver agility declines.”

Weatherston’s comments appeared to run contrary to her bank’s current technology strategy. Although the bank has recently built a number of new technology platforms – for example, its Transactive cash management platform and new core systems for its expanding businesses in Asia, as well as merging platforms in its New Zealand division, the bank has not followed rivals such as the Commonwealth Bank and National Australia in deploying new core banking systems to replace the decades-old platforms which all of Australia’s major banks have relied on for some time.

Addressing the issue
Weatherston said when she looked at other industries which had gone through similar changes, there were three main themes which helped them embrace the future.

The first, the CIO described as ‘effectiveness’, or doing the same for less – cost control. Banks, Weatherston said, had not historically tried to cut costs to the same level as other industries, due to high margins and the low cost of the industry’s essential input – money. In this area, banks could obtain a detailed understanding of costs and their drivers through implemented integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems that would allow all purchases to be controlled and tracked.

Secondly, Weatherston said, banks needed to focus on ‘efficiency’ – or offering more for less against both customer and market standards. In this vein, banks might need to modify not only technology systems but also processes – for example, to meet customer expectations of immediate loan appraisals, or real-time payments.

“The automotive industry has reinvented itself in the last 15 years and year on year reduces costs of manufacturing while meeting increasingly higher levels of customer expectation for added functionality,” Weatherston pointed out. “This is an industry that is also increasingly moving into the age of the personalised vehicle.”

Lastly, Weatherston noted that the third theme of change she had examined was the changing nature of customer expectations. Mentioning dot com companies like eBay and Amazon, Weatherston said bank customers would increasingly expect banks to deliver service standards that they have received elsewhere – demanding banks who offered “interaction and not transaction-based services” and integrated personalised banking featuring multimedia and tailored to meet individual preferences.

When you add in the demand for customers to access services through a variety of channels, Weatherston said bank technologists would need to take a highly integrated approach to process and data design that allowed modular platform builds, “where transactions are held separately from data, message and servicing layers in their IT architecture.

For these changes to take place, Weatherston noted, banks would need new internal architectures – “both business and IT”. The business and technology staff working in banks would need to find new ways of working together – business unit managers giving up some control over processes and technologists taking an increasing leadership role and not just making incremental changes to internal systems every year.

“Financial services companies will need to prepare themselves to deal with all of these internal change management issues, and above all they must make sure IT and businesspeople are not given any opportunity to revert to a legacy system mindset, since this will undercut the bank’s ability to reinvent and respond to market forces,” said Weatherston.

opinion/analysis
To be honest, I was quite inspired by Weatherston’s speech (which I’ll post in full here later on today when I get back to the office). I have previously criticised the CIO and ANZ Bank in general for its purely tactical approach to technology; with one particular Agatha Christie reference which keeps on being mentioned in conversations I’ve had with industry figures on the issue over the past few months.

Weatherston’s speech today demonstrated that although she may not have communicated it perfectly in the past, the CIO deeply understands the issues facing banking technologists in 2011 – as well as what the next few years might look like in her industry.

However, the difficulty – and this is what discussion following the speech focused on – is that Weatherston’s industry-leading speech today is radically divorced from the path which ANZ currently appears to be on. Far from technology and the business working closely together, ANZ’s top IT management does not appear have the sort of internal leadership role that Weatherston might like it to have – at least from the view of my perspective as an outsider.

In addition, the bank’s persistent focus on Asia and avoidance of deep systemic change in its Australia-based core banking platform, as well as what has appeared to be a somewhat abandonment of its innovative goMoney mobile platform, mediates against the argument that that Weatherston is currently walking the vision that she’s talking.

There is a great deal of hope that this might change with the recent internal restructuring which Weatherston has carried out, with ANZ’s IT operation being split along business lines in the hope of developing deep internal domain expertise. And there is also a certain tenacity about the Scottish Weatherston’s character which you can’t help but admire and believe in … a certain humbleness and resilience which you don’t find in, shall we say, the more high-profile characters of some of her contemporaries at other banks.

But at the heart of the matter is that Weatherston just doesn’t yet seem to have the rock-solid internal executive support which a chief information officer like Westpac’s Bob McKinnon enjoys. And until she does, the CIO will find it hard to enact the stirring vision she outlined today.

blog He’s probably Australia’s highest-profile chief information officer; a high flier who is currently leading a billion dollar core banking transformation project the envy of the entire financial services sector. But CommBank group executive enterprise services and chief information officer Michael Harte wasn’t always a good boy, according to this fascinating profile of the executive by iTWire’s Beverley Head. An interesting sample paragraph:

“After a youthful dalliance with the notion of becoming a landscape gardener, Harte started an undergraduate course at Massey University where he completed a singularly undistinguished first year, by passing only one course – business law. Harte’s bigger interest was partying and playing rugby.”

Whatever his history (the road to CommBank CIO was an unusual one), there remains no doubt Harte has found his niche as the bank’s chief technology decision-maker. His influence on CBA’s technology operation over the past few years, from driving change in the bank’s core to completely rejuvenating its end user computing platform and taking leadership in the global cloud computing scene, has been profound. The executive’s enthusiasm and passion for his role is obvious and we salute him.

Image credit: Commonwealth Bank of Australia

Two of Australia’s highest-profile business executives have taken an axe to the Federal Government’s National Broadband Network policy. This time it’s BHP chairman Jac Nasser and CommBank chief executive Ralph Norris, according to The Australian:

Mr Nasser said although he was not completely familiar with the details of the NBN, the $36bn to be spent on the project was not an appropriate allocation of that level of capital in Australia … Mr Norris said “… as for the NBN, there is a lot of infrastructure being made redundant and you have to ask yourself if that is cost-effective.”

My immediate impression of the executives’ comments is that they have a point. However, it’s a point that has been made many, many times before, in more detail than either Norris or Nasser have made it. The NBN policy is more complex than just throwing down a wad of money on fibre — it aims to achieve a number of outcomes, including industry restructuring, addressing broadband blackspots, a perceived lack of industry willingness to invest in its own infrastructure, and so on. I’d like to see some more complex discussion of the issue from top-level executives such as these — if they are serious about engaging in the debate.

Image credit: engindeniz, royalty free

ANZ Bank chief information officer Anne Weatherston has rejected claims the bank’s technology platform was falling behind that of rivals, stating billion-dollar IT splurges by the likes of the Commonwealth Bank in recent years were necessary because of a lack of ongoing investment in technology infrastructure throughout the past several decades.

ANZ is the only major bank in Australia to have consistently rejected the need for core banking modernisation over the past few years.

The most high-profile project in the space is CommBank’s gargantuan $1.1 billion core overhaul, conducted over the past three years in coalition with technology partners SAP and Accenture. However, NAB’s own Oracle-based project is currently gaining a full head of steam, and even Westpac has long-term plans to tackle its core platform, using learnings gleaned from its acquisition of St George, which already operates a relatively modern system.

In March, CommBank CIO Michael Harte and other CBA leaders conducted a briefing on their overhaul in which they repeatedly emphasised that the project had put the bank between two and five years ahead of its rivals, allowing real-time transaction functionality and the speedy deployment of new financial products. However, the initiative has also proven costly. The cost of the CommBank overhaul was initially pegged in 2008 at $580 million. Since that stage it has since received several additional cash injections — with its budget rising by $150 million following its acquisition of BankWest, and then by a further $370 million in February this year.

Last week, in her first broad public briefing since taking the job as ANZ CIO in November 2009, Weatherston said CommBank was only investing so heavily in the project because it had to.

ANZ had upgraded much of its platform in the 1990′s, the CIO said, particularly building what she described as an “embryonic integration layer” on top of its systems which is still used as an interface between high-level systems and the bank’s underlying core banking architecture. That layer, Weatherston said, was “still very usable”, in terms of integrating channels and customer applications into ANZ’s offerings.

However, she said, it was also something that “CBA didn’t have”.

One of the main benefits of its overhaul, according to the Commonwealth Bank, is that it allows for what it describes as ‘real-time banking’. For example, in an ideal real-time banking world, transfers between customer accounts would occur instantly, even between banks — without the need to wait for overnight clearance, as is currently standard in Australia’s banking sector.

In response to a question about the issue, Weatherston said ANZ already had real-time banking — and had had it for “nine years” in Australia and New Zealand. “We can offer the same proposition as CBA”, the executive said — but unlike CommBank, the bank hadn’t chosen to focus on promoting the technology benefits to customers.

Also present at the ANZ briefing was ANZ deputy chief executive officer Graham Hodges.

In response to a question about real-time banking, Hodges said what was important for the bank was keeping its eye on the ball in terms of customer priorities. “It’s about meeting customer need,” he said, noting that for many customers, real-time banking wasn’t particularly a priority, compared to other potential upgrades the bank could be working on.

“The issue for us is that we’ve got a business strategy which we’re following,” said Hodges. “I’m sure that what CBA is doing in terms of managing their business is right for CBA. What we’re doing is right for us. I’d also say that maybe our systems were in different states as well.”

Where most banks tend to standardise on one internal core banking platform (for example the CBA’s use of SAP and NAB’s project to implement Oracle), ANZ currently has three different core banking systems. In Australia, the bank uses CSC’s popular Hogan platform, which is also used at St George. However, it has increasingly rolled out Infosys’ Finacle platform throughout the Asia-Pacific region as it has expanded its operations, and in New Zealand the bank recently consolidated onto the Systematics platform by FIS.

Unlike Harte at CommBank, Weatherston does not believe ANZ’s business strategy will be impacted by continuing to use its existing systems. “We will continue to have three cores, our business strategy does not require us to replace them,” said Weatherston last week. “Over the next few years, we will not be constrained by our core systems.”

ANZ would continue to focus on outcomes such as new business propositions and better customer service, Weatherston added. However, these outcomes “can be developed by integrating into our existing technology solutions.” “As a result,” the CIO added, in a possible dig at CBA’s SAP focus, “our technology roadmap looks a lot more complex than a single one-box vendor solution”.

ANZ isn’t planning to immediately overhaul its core banking platform. But what is it doing? Stay tuned as we continue to do a deep dive this week into what the bank has in store for its IT strategy.

Image credit: Delimiter