Mumbai: With an increase in device-to-device communications and the emergence of different technologies, compatibility will be a major concern in the next two years, which will result in business intelligence (BI) and activity monitoring emerging as the key business drivers.

Another major key business driver will be Web services development, while data mining, collating and dissemination will also play in an important role, says Rajarshi Sengupta, executive director, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), quoting a study, 'Technology Forecast: 2003-05, The Intelligent Real-Time Enterprise', by the research agency.

BI systems, which traditionally have been processing data, will expand their scope to monitor and manage individual transactions and business processes in real-time, he adds. "Business activity monitoring (BAM) will be another key technology, as keeping track of inventories and deliveries will be crucial for corporates. Supply chain management capabilities will provide real-time information on order and inventory."

But, unlike BI, which will be development paradigm, monitoring will be more of a transaction process. Development of Web services will be another important technology, which will result in increased use of eXtensive Markup Language (XML)-based languages. XML, designed for large-scale electronic publishing, will also provide a basis for Web services and play an important role in the exchange of data over the Web.

With the emergence of automated communication between software programmes, which enables to retrieve data without human intervention, it will replace the current mode of Web accesses, he says. "However, the major concern for companies during the next two years will be the 'return on investments (RoIs)', even though these emerging technologies will result in an optimal use to enterprise resource planning (ERP) software."