What are the top issues in data management?
Desai: The issue we see over and over again is large-scale data integration. Large companies have huge quantities of data, whether it’s internal data or they’re taking external data from a syndicator. The processing requirements are high, and the timetables to get things done are pretty tight. So most IT departments are wrestling with implementing scalable, high-performance, robust systems for decision support. Scalability and performance can’t be done as an afterthought. You need to think about a scalable foundation from the very onset [of building a system]. And understand that it doesn’t have an end state — it’s an environment that is constantly growing. Wright: We have 52 million registered users in the U.S. For authentication purposes, it’s important that when somebody hits the site, they don’t wait for 10 seconds to be authenticated against that database. So when you go to Lycos.com, if we’ve seen you before, we’ve already found you in the authentication database before the page
