CSC chief likes CBA strategy 15 October 2010 5:27PM Beverley Head Commonwealth Bank secured an accolade from an unexpected quarter yesterday when CSC chief executive Gavin Larkings said the bank had secured a "potentially dominant leadership position".CSC, which sells the Hogan core banking platform Westpac will use when it begins its core systems revamp in 2014, sponsored the CEDA event that CBA chief Ralph Norris headlined yesterday. Addressing an audience which included Sarv Girn, Westpac's chief technology officer, and Bernadette Inglis, general manager of Westpac's $2 billion five-year Strategic Investment Priorities program, Larkings applauded CBA's focus on technology and operational excellence. "It's in this area that the market perceives that CBA has made significant early investment and is now in a potentially dominant leadership position. "Within our technology industry, the CBA is seen as an innovative leader and is moving aggressively forward in areas such as cloud computing, and is keeping us suppliers on our toes. This strategy is potentially game-changing and there are enormous rewards for the institution and the executives."Unlike the CBA, which has moved ahead aggressively with its core banking reform, using the SAP platform, Westpac last week confirmed it was mothballing its core systems overhaul until 2014, preferring instead to focus on customer-facing technology, including its online banking system. Norris said that while a real-time, 24x7 banking platform was important in driving customer satisfaction, the relationship between information technology and banking had not always been plain sailing, particularly at the CBA."We all know plenty of horror stories around IT projects, and... a lot of stories around what was promised and what was delivered. " He specifically noted the CBA's 1990s Mainstream technology project on which "the write off… was something like $400 million, which is still a big number today." To avoid similar disasters in the future it was imperative that technology and business strategy be tightly integrated, he said.