CBA chats up Web services

By Siobhan Chapman

How do you tout the benefits of Web services in an organisation with a culture of cynicism towards the IT industry at the top of the board? This is the task facing Sarv Girn, chief enterprise architect at Commonwealth Bank.

In March this year, Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s managing director David Murray publicly lambasted the IT industry, saying it has failed to deliver on promises.

Infamously, Murray told the World Congress on IT in Adelaide that the US-based IT industry had “single-handedly wrecked the world economy over the last couple of years”.

Murray’s assertion that promised productivity gains had not been felt from the use of IT reflected a growing cynicism in boardrooms throughout Australia.

This is the climate in which Girn has had to spell out the business benefits of Web services to the board. The key to this, for Girn, is buttoning down a strategy, including an information management strategy, which enhances services and maintains the quality and availability of data exposed through these services.

As IT budgets are constrained, IT needs to focus on information management strategies, security and integration, said Girn.

”There’s a constant pressure on actually cutting margins,” Girn said, speaking at a marcus evans conference on Web services. “What [this pressure] is translating to is a need for efficiency and to really hone in on the value of IT. The comments David Murray made are on the value of IT. Rather than running around with a set of standards, it should be a case of “what can IT deliver?”.”

Commonwealth Bank’s data management and integration strategy, which is the “backbone” to Web services according to Girn, is about delivering data around the “any five” information principle.

”That is: anyone, any information, anywhere, in any form at any time,” he said. “The underlying principle is it’s done such that the quality of data is maintained.”The bank has started holding regular executive forums twice a month to discuss the IT strategy. Girn said Murray himself chairs one of these forums, where the executives debate IT strategy and architecture and the impact on the business. CIO Bob McKinnon chairs the other forum for the general managers of each division.

Girn said there was a “high level of appreciation and debates, and yes, arguments and discussions on what the impact of IT is” at the forums.