© 1996 by British Computer Society
VISION 2020: evolutionary solutions for managing corporate information
Lindsay Birrell is an International Management Consultant specialising in Computer Solutions and is Chairman of an International Business Conference to be held in Nice and Monaco, May 15–19, 1996. The Conference theme emphasises business use of Object-Oriented Database Applications, along with papers on doing business in tax-free Monaco and other interesting topics. For further information contact +44 (0)181 992 7811, email ibexcom{at}iprolink.ch or point your WWW browser at http://www.iprolink.ch/ibexcom/
The development of relational database models and management systems (RDBMS) in the late 1960s and early 1970s first revolutionised and then denominated corporate data management for 25 years. They still do. I started this gaze into my VISION 2020 crystal ball with a respectful, if fleeting, glance back at this period, admitting at the outset that I was already a qualified accountant attending the very first Australian Computer Programmer's Course at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology well before RDBMS became king. In the course of my career, the asset value of information has grown exponentially every year, becoming a business in itself and a strategic factor in companies of every kind. Internal and external information flows are rapidly growing as the workplace becomes ever more computerised. Today, corporations have a critical need for systems which can handle all of their information, whether it exists as text, diagrams, images, audio or video information