Cranking up corporate clock speeds

And don't be misled by the terminology. "It doesn't necessarily mean literally real-time in an electronics sense -- just being massively more efficient and operating at higher corporate 'clock speed'," says Raskino. "In the old days you made lots of stuff. Now you spend your time producing what your customers want," adds Spencer Marlow, solutions marketing manager for retail and CPG at Sterling Commerce.

There's obviously a lot of business issues here that may not be top of the technologist's agenda. What should be is awareness of the global aim of RTE-ness, and enthusiasm for implementing projects that can bring your organisation closer to it.

According to industry watchers, core RTE technologies include:

Web Services
Yes, it's very early days, and we're all maybe a little weary about getting the message being pushed down our throats. But as companies start to open up applications using things like XML and SOAP, the foundations of extra-company processes and supply chains efficiently exchanging data become a step closer. But if that's a bridge too far for you, think about reviving your EAI (enterprise application integration) thinking: how can you achieve better cross-connection of your heavy-lifting business apps?

Business Process Management
Another trendy term, BPM is really all about techniques for isolating the metadata that helps define how intrinsic business processes work -- with the aim of then taking it apart, perhaps to redesign it, or hand off pieces if desired to third parties. "Things that zigzag across organisations like this are what make RTE come alive," says Gartner's Raskino. This also means that BPM languages, such as BPML and BPEL, will get more visible

ERP
Major vendors like SAP, Peoplesoft, Oracle, SSA Global and Geac will all be important in the move to RTE, as companies will look to their back-office systems as places to identify areas of improvement and speed up time to market. Note that there's no problem if an ERP process actually takes place as a batch, rather than in literal real-time; a lot of economic efficiency results from doing thinks in bulk at times that suits the company more than the supplier.