I have worked to get Boeing to move to a data-centric approach for most of my 35 year career. We have solved many of the technical problems that have stood in the way of a data-centric business, but the commercial interests that profit from holding company data hostage have so far been too strong for that approach to be realized. To achieve this vision it is necessary to invest in substantial IT development to augment commercial products, which would have major ROI benefits, but IT investment is now often viewed as if it were a commodity cost even when it is not i.e. has very large ROI benefits.