If Suncorp's plans to merge with Promina get the regulators' green light the expanded insurance and banking entity will spend about $395 million on the integration; much of that earmarked for the information systems needed to run a diversified financial services business with about $20 billion in assets. In return Suncorp expects to secure savings of $225 million a year, with the bulk of those achieved within two years.If this was a greenfields site with no old computers - the so called "legacy" systems which are expensive to run and demand IT teams with specialist skills to run each one - the merger would be hard enough. Suncorp, however, already manages a patchwork quilt of back end computer systems developed over many years or inherited from its 2001 merger with GIO, while Promina's portfolio of differently branded products supported by separate computing silos is even more disparate. Integrating these systems and then mining them for cost savings could prove a Sisyphean task and without doubt one of the biggest information technology jobs in Australia over the next two years. Right now, it's not clear who will take this task on. At present neither Suncorp nor Promina has a permanent, dedicated chief information officer.The proposed structure of the merged group presented when the plans were first revealed calls for a chief information officer reporting to Suncorp's chief executive, John Mulcahy. According to one industry analyst the key to successful integration will be to appoint an interim CIO; "On an 18 months contract, incentivise them, pay them almost nothing during the project and a motza at the end so that they can cut through the BS of the vested interests." Finding the right individual, who has a track record in integration on this scale will be a challenge in the small Australian market and it may well demand an overseas search.Once the CIO role is filled comes the real fun; working out how to bring together the technology and winkle out the savings. There are some crossover technologies. Both Suncorp and Promina use HiPortfolio for funds accounting, although Suncorp uses an older version than Promina. Ian Mathieson, chief executive of DST International says it has been engaged in a "long dialogue" with Suncorp about a migration to HiPortfolio3, which would bring it into line with the Promina system. "If they decided to combine systems from a technical and operational view then that would be relatively easy as they share exactly the same file structures," said Mathieson. However, this applies only to fund administration - most of the back end applications run by the two organisations don't dovetail. They are different systems, use different database structures and run different products. Five years after buying GIO, the New South Wales-focussed insurance brand remains independent of Suncorp's systems at the application level. While Suncorp management often talked of the successful integration of GIO, that occurred with respect to shared hardware, processes and IT staff rather than applications support.The GIO portfolio of Cogen applications is still