ANZ will maintain three separate core banking systems into the foreseeable future, the bank confirmed at a briefing on the bank's technology strategy on Friday.Anne Weatherston, ANZ's chief information officer and Graham Hodges, the bank's deputy chief executive, held the briefing to cater to media and investor interest for an overview of the bank's plans on a range of technology topics.The approach on core systems was already clear: the bank is sticking with Hogan in Australia; consolidating on Systematics in New Zealand (jettisoning Hogan in that market) and has recently developed a third core system for its Asian businesses on the Infosys Finacle platform.Weatherston told the briefing: "Our business strategy does not currently require us to replace or consolidate them.  "Our analysis of the strategic requirements of the ANZ business have persuaded us that in the next immediate years, we are not constrained by the capability of our core systems.  "The focus for investment will, instead, be on the introduction of new technology capability that enables new business propositions, and a better customer service outcome.  This can be developed and delivered by integrating into our existing platforms."Other IT priorities - including a refreshed architecture - are chewing up the bank's budget.One innovation is the adoption of virtual desktops (something that remains uncommon in financial services) as well as a careful embrace of internal clouds.There's also plenty of investments in a range of cross-border, payments, human resources, management information and other corporate systems.Weatherston sketched out a few themes for "the bank's strategic agenda towards 2017" that she said was "based around key architectural principles.  "It's an approach designed to enable the next stage of the bank's agenda, by deploying technology that is fit for purpose, integrated and standardised." She said that in "local and more specialised businesses, we will define point solutions as required, and this would apply in those services were the local markets are highly differentiated, and need relevant technologies. "Across the bank, however, what is non-negotiable, is we have defined an architected, single approach to our data, with customer MI [management information], our integration software, standard design and architecture, and our security and authentication access layer."Weatherston and Hodges cited the value of IT investment decisions taken in the 1990s, including the refresh of the Hogan system and aspects of the redesign of the system architecture from that era."One of the benefits of what they did in the 90s was that to create a kind of embryonic early integration layer, which has allowed us a little flexibility," Weatherstone said."So that integration layer, while old, is still usable with respect to our ability to add a new channel and customer interfaces without having to alter the course."Weatherston added that, "with respect to integration, we have commenced the design and build of a single integration architecture where all services will be reusable and has, in fact, been already deployed across the Transactive [payments] platform as we build out into Asia."