In the world of IT, the open source movement is a stunning example of a network army. From roots in small communities devoted to music, martial arts, science fiction and medieval role playing games, the open source movement united and ignited on a single issue: build software that doesn't suck. Now Gartner estimates that more than 80 percent of its clients use at least two open source products.

Microsoft treatment of the open source movement illustrates everything that one should not do when facing a network army. Don't start a war with a network army. There are no leaders, so the war can only end when one side surrenders completely. Negotiations must be carried out in public and consist of actions, not words.

In a world without secrets, individuals, governments, businesses, institutions and even terrorist organizations will join network armies. Take care not to become their nemesis.

There's no room for secrets in business. Businesses historically had lots of secrets from their suppliers and partners. That worked in an era when everybody was an adversary in one way or another. It won't work now.

To maintain responsiveness, businesses must know the capacities, capabilities, skills, strengths and weaknesses of their strategic partners, and suppliers in their value chain. That visibility will extend all the way to the customer in the next few years. By then, companies that can't mage their performance to competitive levels will be detected immediately and pushed out of the network.

The trend that began with the arrival of the Internet - a shift in power from suppliers to customers based on widespread availability of information - will intensify at all levels of the value chain.

Initially partners in a value chain will use these indicators to assess and predict each other's performance. Sooner or later, investors and markets will use them for the same purpose. Instead of looking backward at financials, markets will use performance metrics to look forward and predict the status of customer relationships.

There's room for business in a no secrets world.The good news is that knowing something about someone, but choosing not to disclose it, can be the basis of a new and profitable relationship. You can choose to become a trusted adviser to your customers, where you collect, but never abuse their data.

The trusted adviser seeks to gain customer trust and translate that trust into permission to service the customer. It could be permission to carry out secure transactions, suggest new partners, products and services to complement the existing relationship or just to look out for privacy infringements on their behalf.

In this world, privacy is important. Because the world is awash with information that is extremely sensitive to information use and misuse, customers will value those organizations that do not abuse their knowledge. CIOs should prepare to operate in this world where trusted advisers can prevail.

What this means practically, is that information security and privacy will continue at the top of CIO priorities for the foreseeable future and that CIOs will be asked to implement increasingly comprehensive technology for managing compliance with privacy regulations. Then firms will be able to start making money out of knowing every move their customers make - but not talking about it to anyone.

Andrew Rowsell-Jones is vice president and research director for Gartner's CIO Executive Programs