back to article Oz Bank share price dives after reveal of IBM/Oracle plan

Is it feasible that investors are belatedly learning that a technology refresh might involve spending huge amounts of money on risky projects? If the National Australia Bank's experience yesterday (13 March) is any guide, the answer might be a tentative “yes”. The bank, which suffered some high-profile outages during 2012, …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    good thing I don't bank there ...

    "The bank's executives must be wondering what might count as “doing IT right” "

    Well not handing your customer's data over to a US company, required by law to give unrestricted and unquestioned access to the US govt. might be a good start. Makes me wonder how they intend to comply with the data protection act ...

    Not that I expect any investors were thinking along those lines. They probably heard 'cloud' and immediately hit the sell button .. or heard 'IBM' and remembered the cluster-fuck that was Qld Health's payroll system ...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: good thing I don't bank there ...

      "Well not handing your customer's data over to a US company, required by law to give unrestricted and unquestioned access to the US govt. might be a good start. Makes me wonder how they intend to comply with the data protection act ... "

      IBM Australia, Ltd. They have an Australian national subsidiary.

      "or heard 'IBM' and remembered the cluster-fuck that was Qld Health's payroll system ..."

      Give Big Blue some credit, IBM has designed, or assisted with designing, very nearly every bank's systems. They can handle consolidating some data centers, virtualizing some servers, setting up some provisioning software and calling it a private cloud so someone can check the cloud box.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: good thing I don't bank there ...

        Nicho was making that classic Australian error, which is to assume that NAB are a large bank in global terms. They are not, they are an irrelevant minnow. IBM could deliver that project standing on their head.

        1. Concrete Gannet
          FAIL

          Re: good thing I don't bank there ...

          "Irrelevant minnow"? Horse feathers.

          NAB is 36th largest by assets in the world. All the Australian big four are in the top 50 banks in the world, see http://www.bankersaccuity.com/resources/bank-rankings/ .

          Australia's banking sector is very concentrated, so the big four are very big banks in global terms.

          1. Shagbag

            Wrong!

            The list you gave is a joke.

            It ranks assets in USD.

            In other words, it's only down to the currently strong AUD ((that's riding the current commodity boom) that any of the Australian banks are in the list. Translate at the historical average (0.75) and none of them make it.

            Furthermore, the list puts Barclays above JP Morgan, Santander, UBS and HSBC which - if you ask anyone in London or New York - is a complete and utter joke.

            Then there's Bank of Scotland at 33 (that's Bank of Scotland, not RBS). That's the same BoS that was bailed out by Lloyds in 2008/9 which was then bailed out by the UK Taxpayer. But according to the list it's ranked #33 (above all of NAB, CBA, ANZ and Westpac). I'm sorry but that's a complete FAIL.

            No, AC is right. Australian banks, while having a big domestic presence, do not really feature on the international stage and to think otherwise is misguided.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          FAIL

          Re: good thing I don't bank there ...

          @ac 02:34 - Do pay attention, I made no such mistake. At no point did I refer to the size of the client. I referred to both the Patriot act and a major loal screwup by IBM .. Exactly how do you draw the conclusion that I made any assumption about the size of NAB.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: good thing I don't bank there ...

          "IBM could deliver that project standing on their head."

          Agree, IBM is really good at infrastructure projects (they invented practically everything on the data center floor).... application/business process redesign projects, there they have had some issues. Although, to be fair, with every major consultancy and SI you can point to a list of failed projects. That is just the nature of those projects. No company brings in a major SI if they think the project will be a piece of cake. They bring in the major SIs because everyone within the company has said "not touching that system with a 10ft pole." They outsource the problem child or ridiculous complex projects which inherently have a high risk associated with them. Anything involving business process redesign is always going to be troublesome, even if it is eventually successful.

      2. P. Lee
        Paris Hilton

        Re: good thing I don't bank there ...

        also.. "Private Cloud"

        That's would be NAB's cloud, not IBM's.

        Cloud = two datacentres and an F5.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: good thing I don't bank there ...

          @p lee I quote ..'private cloud under the hand of IBM'. IBM is a US company. IBM Aust (or anywhere else) is a wholly owned subsidiary. That means they are owned and therefore controlled by the US parent. that's enough to bring them in reach. If you doubt this, simply read the act.

      3. Anonymous Dutch Coward
        Mushroom

        US subsidiaries should ship your data to the home of the free if Uncle Sam asks for it...

        IIUC, US regulations don't care if they're subsidiaries... (don't know where they draw the line: wholly owned, majority owned, somebody on the board who has a fondness for US products...)...

    2. LarsG

      Re: good thing I don't bank there ...

      If it was a Government initiative it would be definately be doomed to fail, however in the private sector it has a better chance of success.

    3. FlatEarther
      Meh

      Re: good thing I don't bank there ...

      I think you'll find that the data remains on Australian soil. APRA would be (is) all over this. APRA is a much scarier organisation for an Australian Bank than the US Govt.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: good thing I don't bank there ...

        @flatearther et al. You lot really don't get the patriot act do you ? It won't matter who or what the bank is afraid of, they'll never find out. IBM will be instructed to provide access/copies of whatever the feds are interested in and they will comply. Not because they're evil or anything like that but because by law they have no choice. They can't even tell anyone they're doing it.

        I'll short circuit the next phase of commentary but reminding you that the type and level of contol and governance that NAB would need to put in place to identify/prevent this would cost so much it would negate the benefit of outsourcing.

        As a non sequitur, ther are other threads moaning about the loss of jobs due to outsourcing. I'm surprised that none of you enterprising lads have siezed on the gift of FUD that the patriot act provides to snatch business back from US vendors. Remember,the only safe data is the data you keep away from US jurisdiction.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Surprisingly, at least to The Register, the bank hasn't yet achieved what's been an aim of most enterprise systems, particularly CRM, for more than a decade – delivering a single customer view."

    I have heard it talked about for a decade, but it is rare to see a true "single view of the customer" CRM in action. CRM projects have to be amongst the lowest for successful achievement of all project objectives. It is always difficult because, unlike say AR or AP, no company does sales the exactly same way as their industry peers... and there is no true definition of "customer" from a metadata perspective. Marketing thinks anyone who clicked on an ad or is a prospect is a customer, sales thinks anyone who has purchased something in the last year or whatever time frame is a customer (and possibly multiple definitions within sales), services/support thinks only those with an active support contract are customers, so forth.

  3. Chris 86

    NAB was actually down 1.87%.

    CBA was -1.7%, WBC was -2.12%

    I really don't think that this had anything to do with the well trailed IT update, more to do with UBS calling the top in the Banks yesterday morning.

    1. Shagbag

      Exactly.

      Good spot Chris. It's rare to find a financial journalist who knows what they're talking about and this one certainly didn't. The whole sector (and/or market) was down as you've pointed out. To say NAB's share price decline was specific to it is a classic financial journo fail.

      1. JayBizzle
        Trollface

        Re: Exactly.

        Not a financial journo, just an IT one

  4. FlatEarther

    Single View

    I'm a NAB customer. I can confirm that NAB has approximately 15 conflicting views of the customer up until about a year ago. All of a sudden it started to improve. It's not perfect, but at least they don't have to change your contact details in 12 different places.

    The share price dip has nothing to do with the IT announcement. It's just a small correction after a very big recent increase - 23.11 in mid November peaking at 31.64 a couple of days ago. It's now 30.60. All of the other big OZ banks had the similar rise and recent correction

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