Database systems are the foundation of today's corporate E-Business applications. The e-business database system of this age supports customer transactions, inventory, reporting, accounting, tracking, shipping and ordering. E-Business use of database management technology is expected to surpass and dwarf the current traditional uses of DBMS systems with the advent and popularity of wireless devices. In order to optimize the use of DBMS in business, information needs to be able to flow freely across corporations from the customers through the supply chain and back through the customer. Companies who are successful in the future will be the ones who are able to most intelligently exploit their information assets to drive first rate performance while improving operational efficiency (IBM Introduces World's First, Fully Integrated E-Business Database). Companies that are unable to adapt to the E-Business model will most likely be left behind in the dust.
In the current technology trend, the web has become the driving force behind the way we have and will continue to deploy and build vendor software and IT applications. New technologies such as HTML, XML and Java allow developers to create applications and software tools that client software can be use on almost any platform. Also as new devices become available, these can immediately be supported without changing any of the current software. .
This ability to build and deploy portable software is important to the mobile computing market. Mobile workers will increasingly be able to use handheld devices such as PDA's and mobile phones that can access corporate computer systems. These devices use a variety of operating systems such as Microsoft Windows CE, Palm OS, Symbian and EPOC for example. Being able to interface these devices to existing servers without having to change the server software is a very large advantage. All of these devices are large consumers and producers of data.