[In the keynote, senior vice president APAC] Bob Hayward spent a painful amount of time on the definition of real-time enterprise. We think it is really important not to say: "OK we have the next new thing, it is RTE and away we go." But what people need to understand - especially CIOs - is that RTE is a way of thinking about your business differently. This is not a new technology; this is not about technology implementation. This is a way of thinking about your business differently. But there is an opportunity for CIOs to play a leadership role to make sure that it's not to seen as a silver bullet.

I don't think that people will see the notion of the real-time enterprise as a silver bullet answer to the governance and ethics and other issues that have been raised on a global basis inside companies. I do think, however, that they will see it as an opportunity to get smarter and more competitive by using some things that they already have and, hopefully, not having to spend a whole lot of money.

We don't stand up there and say: "You have to spend a gazillion dollars to make the real-time enterprise work. You do need to look at some of the things you have and figure out where you [should] do some things differently."

Does a silver bullet mentality risk exist? Sure. But I think it always exists.

CIO: You've been predicting at recent Gartner events the demise of something like 50 plus per cent of IT companies . . .

Michael Fleisher: Technology brands . . . There is no question that consolidation, especially through mergers and acquisitions, is an incredible challenge. There's no question that the next maturation phase of the technology industry is going to involve a real hard look at the successes and failures: who can acquire companies and manage that process and who can't.

We know it's going to happen. It has to happen for two simple reasons. One, there is still a huge overcapacity in this industry. There is just too much production, whether it's smart people making software or factories manufacturing chips or service companies with 30 people on their books. The other reason is that our clients, the CIOs around the world, are demanding a more consistent unified approach. They say: "I want you to solve this problem for me, and I don't want to have to deal with 17 different companies who subdivide the work."

The two that have been most notable on the industry so far are IBM taking out PwC and HP taking out Compaq. I promise you if I were to go back two years - just two years - and do a survey, something like 1 per cent of the people surveyed would have said that those weren't going to happen. When I say that 50 per cent of the technology brand names are going to go away in the next couple of years, I know there are some people who will say: "It can't be!"

IT must rationalise. Every industry over history has gone through these crazy boom phases where huge amounts of innovation drives huge amounts of growth and huge numbers of new companies. Eventually, they reach the end of that curve and then they consolidate to provide services to their customers. That is what is going to happen with technology. We are no different.