Commonwealth Bank invested $589 million in technology in the first half of the year, and for the first time in six years not a cent was spent on the now completed core banking modernisation program.CBA chief executive Ian Narev explained that 63 per cent of its technology investment was now directed at meeting productivity and growth targets. This is the big winner, and is up from 49 per cent of the technology budget in the comparable period of 2013. Twenty-four per cent is allocated to meeting regulatory requirements and 13 per cent to branch technology.The bank wrote off $68 million worth of software during the half year, across 30-plus projects, in what appears to be a one-off clearing of the technology decks.According to Narev, although the $1.1 billion core modernisation program is complete, the bank will maintain its "long term commitment to technology leadership and embracing the opportunity of technology."He nominated mobile technologies and big data as the two main technology themes that the bank was pursuing, with big data having the capability to be "disruptive" for the sector.Big data refers not only to the data reserves that the bank holds, detailing customer transactions, but also the wealth of information it might capture from customers' mobile activities, social network posts or cloud-based content. He said that big data would allow the bank to tailor services and products to a "segment of one" for individual customers, based on analysis of preferences and behaviours through using both the bank's structured databases and unstructured data culled from a variety of sources.Narev said: "We take seriously the data we hold." And he added that "we respect the privacy of data and will allow them [customers] to govern how it is used."This suggests that Commbank's big data initiative will be of the opt-in variety. This could prove a challenging sell for consumers.While Narev clearly views technology as a competitive and strategic weapon, he acknowledged that it was also instrumental in delivering new competitors and threats. He pointed to the rapid rise of technology-based newcomers to the financial services sector, suggesting that it was important regulators carefully monitored the activity of new entrants along with that of traditional financial services companies.