BUSINESSES everywhere, particularly in the hi-tech industry, are under mounting pressure from rivals and are changing their power to react.
The winners are those who are able to provide more and better information faster.
Over the years, computing technology has been evolving to support these needs.
First, some of the power was moved out of the central mainframe systems to mini-computers, then to networks of personal computers (PCs).
The reality today is that most companies are operating with a mix of old and new systems - many of which do a valuable job, but cannot easily communicate with each other.
'With the advent of the PC in the early 80s, people became witness to a new philosophy, one computer talking to or relating to or communicating with another computer over a network. And that has become known as client-server [computing],' said Brooks Freeman general manager client-server computing of IBM World Trade Asia's Asia-Pacific server division.