I have just read a great article by Nigel Stokes  (CEO of DataMirror) in the latest edition of Business Integration Journal with the aforementioned title.

Nigel's 10 commandments are listed below (do read the complete article for perspective):

  1. Thou shalt establish clear leadership and ownership.
  2. Thou shalt examine vertical and horizontal integration needs.
  3. Thou shalt eliminate data silos for effective internal information sharing.
  4. Thou shalt take a step-by-step approach to integration.
  5. Thou shalt leverage existing investment wherever possible.
  6. Thou shalt examine IT investments that support emerging technologies.
  7. Thou shalt give high priority to system security.
  8. Thou shalt conform to corporate and regulatory mandates.
  9. Thou shalt provide partners with timely access to corporate data.
  10. Thou shalt keep the customer in mind at all times.

Funnily enough (as is the case with the old and new biblical testaments), you can condense the 10 commandments into one. In the case of the bible, the 10 commandments have become the single tenet: Love Thy Neighbor as Thy Self. 

If you treat others as you would like to be treated, then you would never violate any of the original 10 commandments in the first place.

In the case of the Real-Time Enterprise, I believe there is really only one commandment for the commercial enterprise (to be specific): Attain leadership in your chosen market place.

If you understand that this is the basis of any commercial enterprise, since no CEO worth his/her salt aims to finish second in their market place. Then investments in IT would be increasingly oriented towards this goal. Thus, the items listed in the 10 commandments will simply become second nature en route to realization of the Real-Time Enterprise vision.

Reality check! The old testament and new testament address different eras in history (primitive and less primitive times respectively) relative to current times. In a sense I think the same applies to IT (the message has to match the time). We are still in the later stages of the old testament with specificity that is perceived to be unavoidable across the following realms:

  • Application Architecture (Monolithic)
  • Database Management (proprietary as opposed to standards based data access)
  • Operating Systems (you should know this story by now)
  • Programming Languages (Java or nothing, C# or nothing etc..)
  • Technology Religion / Movement (e.g. Open Source, Free Software et al.)

So maybe we do need the 10 commandments after all, as the message needs to be simpler in these primitive IT times :-)

Looking forward, I see Web 1.0 (first coming of the Web) as duly placing the role of John the Baptist (we know what happened to him), and the real thing being Web 2.0+ (a web and internet specific spin on the Real-Time Enterprise vision), which is currently pretty much in its infancy (I wonder who is King Herold, Hmm..).