CBA attack dogs growl at computer giants

Beverley Head
Wednesday, 28 April 2010 12:06

Business IT - Technology

The Commonwealth Bank has a rich history of taking on the IT sector - eight years ago it was then CEO David Murray who launched a blistering attack on computer companies, and now the bank's group executive of enterprise services and CIO, Michael Harte has come out swinging against technology companies which have clung to legacy pricing models and vendor lock in.

In his recent speech to the Committee for Economic Development in Australia (CEDA) Harte issued a broadside against some of the giants of the computer industry, particularly IBM, HP, Oracle and Microsoft for being slow to move to cloud computing pricing models, clinging instead to legacy pricing. Harte complained that that computer users, rather than computer vendors had been forced to drive changes in the IT market.

In 2002 Murray speaking at the World Congress on IT said; 'Microsoft says information technology is going to lead the growth of the world economy. Well let me tell you the IT industry in the US has single handedly wrecked the world economy because the promises were large and by the time they were turned into investor promises at the casino end of the equity markets then the investments were entirely unrealistic.'

Murray went on to reconcile with the tech sector, invest $1.5 billion in the Which New Bank? Programme, and hire Bob McKinnon as CBA CIO (who is now performing that role at Westpac). But CBA is maintaining its role as attack dog over any shortcomings it perceives in the IT sector.

While there were no casino references in Harte's speech, he did make clear that the big computer companies would nned to throw it more than the occasional bone in the future.  The bank is now forging international alliances, initially with Deutsche Bank and Bank of America to band together in order to secure better prices from vendors, and also develop shared computer technology.

Harte made clear during his speech that in its search for improved efficiencies and increased agility CBA, now mid way through its $730 million core systems revamp, would make swingeing changes in the way it bought computers, software and services.

'We're saying that we will never buy another data centre. We will never buy another rack or server or storage device or network device again,' said Harte.