Inefficiently sharing data within a company is about to become a thing of the past thanks to middleware. And the only people who won't benefit are your competitors

These days, just about every company makes at least some use of technology to help it run its business. Computer software that is simultaneously becoming increasingly advanced and affordable is transforming such functions as finance and human resources - making them more efficient and effective. But many organisations - even large and supposedly sophisticated ones - are still not enjoying the real benefits of information technology because their computer systems are organised along functional lines and do not allow data to be transferred from one part of the business to another. We have all come across instances of this - for example, when our bank invites us to take out an insurance policy that we already have because customers are seen in terms of accounts rather than as people or when we are dealing with a call centre and are told they cannot deal with a query because they do not have access to the data.

By contrast, one of the key factors behind the great success of the supermarket group Tesco has been its use of information technology, particularly the data this enables it to gather about its customers through its Clubcard. Most companies using even rudimentary information technology systems hold a lot of information about their business - the trick is finding it and making it available to the people who need it. There is no shortage of raw material. In his recent book, Where Value Hides, Stuart E. Jackson of LEK Consulting writes: "Executives today are positively bombarded by statistics, data, analyses and opinions. In fact, most of the senior executives I work with tell me they get too much information."

The trick is in turning the raw material into something useful. Consultants constantly talk about the time that is wasted in management meetings because what they are discussing is either without value or outdated. This is where "middleware" comes in. This is the name given to the software that has been developed to link the various applications, such as customer relationship management and supply-chain management. This process, known as enterprise application integration, is designed to make organisations work more effectively by doing away with the "information silos" that hamper the transfer of information between departments and the "information bottlenecks" that require employees to intervene by either keying in data or making decisions.

Organisations have been aware of the limitations of computer systems that do not allow data to be transferred between departments for some time. But hitherto the only ways around it have been the time-consuming and expensive writing of special programmes to create links between the systems and similarly costly customisation of systems. Recently, though, new systems have been devised that make it much easier for organisations to bring their different technologies together and so start to see the gains that technology promises. Gavin Dimmock, director of Fusion Middleware for Oracle UK and Ireland, says that interest in these developments is such that in the past six years the division has grown to be a significant part of the company's revenues and its fastest growing business.

Pointing out that the market is being driven by the desire of all sorts of customers to link different technologies or business processes, he adds: "The business challenges are exactly the same whether it is a business in the top ten of the FTSE 100 or an SMB [small or medium-sized business]." After all, the issue of linking an internet retail site to the company's financial system and procurement department is pretty much the same whether the business concerned is a start-up or an internationally-known name. As Dimmock says, it is "just a difference of scale".

However, the recent heavy mergers and acquisitions activity has given an added boost to the market because the merging companies will often have entirely different systems that will need to be integrated and also because of the pressure to produce cost efficiencies in order to justify the deals. At the same time, the arrival of Service Oriented Architecture, the name given to loosely linked services supporting business processes is helping businesses develop their technological capabilities without wasting their investments in earlier applications. As such an approach is open rather than tied to a particular technology, it is relatively easy for it to be upgraded and developed at less cost - to the benefit of the business concerned. The real advantages come later, though, as businesses become much more effective at serving customers - who are likely to be impressed by a more seamless link between, say, the call centre and the engineers department - and efficient at monitoring operations. Increasingly, the businesses that are better than their rivals at delivering more information that is accurate and timely to the managers making the decisions will be the successful ones.

Oracle's middleware is integration made easy. Oracle partner NCS (www.ncsltd.com) is based in London's Docklands and works extensively with the financial institutions nearby on ensuring that their technology needs are met. Business development manager Bob Dunsby says the presence of Oracle's Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) over the past couple of years has helped boost demand for applications integration because it makes the whole process much easier.

Financial institutions have been particularly eager to adopt it because - having the money to invest and the manpower to do the work required - they tend to be in the vanguard of such developments. Dunsby says BPEL offers additional advantages over the traditional middleware packages because it is maintained by Oracle and is much quicker to implement. Learn more about the latest middleware solutions at the Oracle IT Fusion conference on Wednesday 11 July 2007 being held at the Emirates Stadium. Register at www.oracle-itfusion-conference.com