"There is a paradigm shift happening in the Enterprise Information Systems space. Information Technology is continually changing, and you'd be forgiven for thinking that "paradigm shift" is overstating things, but please read on. From the age of punched cards through to today's internet driven systems, one thing has stayed fairly constant: software vendors and their implementors have been driving the Enterprise IT industry. This is changing. It will be hard to see initially, but it is happening already in some more prescient organizations. As organizations realize they can take control of their own destiny by adopting data-centric principles, they will see their dependency on application software wither. The cost of running internal information systems will drop at least ten-fold, and the cost of integrating them will drop even more rapidly. This will decimate the $400 billion/ year application software industry and the $400 billion / year systems integration industry. The benefit will accrue to the buyers, and will accrue earliest to the first movers. This is a major sea change. As we will describe within, it must be driven by customers. This volume is the existence proof, and the executives guide to what needs to be done. The two companion volumes (coming soon) will aid the designers and developers in making this new generations of systems"--