[nic-ferrier]

The OP is absolutely spot on, however, innovation in those fields he mentions is very hard because they tend to be closed shops. I think the best thing those places could do would be to talent buy some startup teams and see what happens because it's sure as hell true that their existing IT is failing to move with the times.

Witness the ridiculous mess the British banking industry has gotten into (with RBS, a massive British consumer bank having a failure that caused them weeks of further problems).

It can often seem to those of us outside that management in those companies has focussed on pure profit, not dealt with technical debt and not even tried to make an effort to adapt their IT strategy to the rest of the world.