Bladewatch.com

http://www.finextra.com/fullstory.asp?id=17649

US IT services firm EDS has hired former Westpac technology chief Michael Coomer to lead its global financial services division.

Coomer was most recently group executive, business and technology services for Westpac where he was responsible for IT, e-business, outsourcing governance and all back-office operations and support. He retired from the bank in July this year.

Prior to his post at Westpac, Coomer spent four years as chief information officer at National Australia Bank, where he was responsible for leading all IT activities in Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the UK and the US.

He has also worked for IBM Global Services, Ansett Transport Industries and Rockwell International.

As we commoditize the platform we’re seeing more and more of these ‘partnerships’ where bank1 and IT company3 form a venture to supply the IT, as well as those IT services businesses like EDS. This article is talking about EDS hiring a new member of the team to head their global financial services division. Issues of outsourcing aside, financial services as an industry has been facing the challenge of getting what it needs from the IT in terms of stability, scalability and performance for its needs whilst controlling the costs and avoiding being diverted from their core business. It will be interesting to see going forward where these kind of service companies sit within the value chain – what level of support is it that you want IT to provide, keep in mind do you really want your application support teams worrying about security patch levels, firmware fixes and infrastructure issues? How much of the IT value chain is it that your business wants to own or run? As we abstract the infrastructure do we want to be owning/managing it?

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