Unlike HTML, which just marks up text, XML lets developers write custom tags to identify objects. It is now starting to use XML as a way to bridge the gap between its systems and suppliers' and customers' systems. The legacy-system integration issue becomes even more complex for companies that have data about individual customers scattered across several different databases and want to get a single view of a customer's business with the company. There's no easy way to link all of these accounts together to let a customer see his or her entire portfolio of products without having to be authenticated for each account. That way, Stoltzfus says, the customer can log in once and access all accounts.
Data replication is one way to work around the data availability problem.
But CIOs must decide whether it's worth the expense of replicating data every 15 minutes or whether it can wait every 15 hours. Without any form of customization, you can't trigger cross-sells or upsells. Navigating these strategic and technological hurdles may sound like a tall order to some CIOs.