>>Not possessing any knowledge I find it hard to believe that MSFT doesnt have a good idea how many licences have been purchased in Latin america.
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>I don't find this hard to believe at all.
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>What I have found amazing is how little information companies manage to get from their data.
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>Diane Swonk was the chief economist at Bank One when I was there, she was also the president/director of the National Association of Economists and I remember her saying that she believed the biggest challenge in business was the lack of information.
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>In either this month's or last month's SQL Server magazine there was an article about re-structuring companies data because of all the disjointed data sets they tend to have which is not conducive to decision making.
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>Microsoft was given as an example of a company facing this problem


Ms. Swonk's statement amazes me. If there is an industry that has data, it's the banking industry. Maybe they just haven't figured out how to use it right yet.

Mergers are probably part of the problem. I have been a Bank One customer for some time, including First Chicago before and Chase now. Bank One was a direct client (lockbox processing) when I was an independent.