Software Rules: How the Next Generation of Enterprise Applications Will Increase Strategic Effectiveness

A top industry executive explains total software integration and how it holds the key to market leadership

To achieve fast, agile, and diverse responsiveness to today's ever shifting business needs, executives need to successfully implement strategic decisions based more on reality rather than rhetoric.

In Software Rules, Oracle senior executive Mark Barrenechea describes for business readers how, over the next few years, the total integration of software functions into "E-business suites," will radically transform the business landscape. An E-business suite is a set of applications, founded on a centralized database and integrated by desing, that optimizes the supply and demand chains together, enabling employees anywhere on the globe to access accurate and reliable business data that always reflects real information. Using case studies from BellSouth, Xerox, EMC, HP, Oracle, and other leading companies, he describes how E-business suites work to help companies in all industry sectors to centralize change, dramatically improve customer service, slash production costs, streamline product introduction and upgrades, gather definitive business intelligence, transform marketing into electronic selling, and much more.

Mark Barrenechea is the senior vice president for applications development at Oracle Corporation. The author of e-Business or Out of Business, he is a frequent and popular speaker at computer industry events.