And this is what you did while at Wachovia?

Yes, we did that for our traders and our bankers. We created information-as-a-service, using the technologies I talked about from Oracle and Composite. We were able to expose information and provide a single view of a client's transactions in a real-time manner without creating a whole new data warehouse. So, that meant users could make better decisions and cross-sell more.

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Read a case study about Wachovia's application-virtualization project

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How about at other firms? Are you seeing others embrace this type of strategy?

Yes, and we're beyond the early visionaries. We're seeing adoption [by IT executives] who are recognizing that they have to continue to drive better shareholder value, productivity and return on equity. I see this happening at manufacturers, Wall Street firms, service providers-multiple industries.

But a lot of firms do say, 'Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!' But all you're really saying is you're going to change the way you do it. You're going to improve service levels. You're going to do more with less. And you're going to make things more real-time. That really is the net of it. Guess what? The tools, the technology and the evolution of it are out there. Get started on your journey.

Editor's note: You can get a regular dose of Bishop's IT insight in his "Intelligent Network Computing" blog.

© 2007 Network World Inc.