How is the IT merger going with NYSE? It's going fine. There are a lot of planning activities. We're talking about how we're going to merge technology, who's going to do what, what are the synergies, and how do we identify them so we can take advantage of them as quickly as possible. Until the companies are merged, we can't start executing, but we have a whole list of things to do.

What is the most difficult part of the merger facing you? The most difficult part is not going to be the technology part. The most difficult part is going to be the people part. It's the classic small, entrepreneurial company -- that's us -- vs. the long-standing nonentrepreneurial company -- them. They've got many more times people than we do. And what we need to do is combine these two companies and take advantage of both and make them realized as quickly as we can do that. And that means a lot of people are going to have to change.

Many companies have been saying, 'We won't use IM unless we can keep it for internal use only.' Why is your policy different? It's similar to our Web philosophy. I've worked at other companies where they issue a Web policy where they say there are certain Web sites you can't go to so don't even try it. But here we take the approach that everybody here knows what corporate equipment is supposed to be used for and going to pornography sites is a very bad judgment, yet we don't stop people from going there. If they want to go there, technically they can. Of course business to any site is logged, and if we see people do that, especially on a regular basis, they will be at the top of somebody's list to have a long conversation with and explain corporate use policy to again.

How important has IM become to your company? As far as importance to the business, I can't say it's extremely important. However, it is a mode of communication that our people use with people outside the company. So even if they use it once a month, we have to track every single byte that goes out across our wires, and it has to be archived. If we turned it off completely and said no one can use ever it, I don't think it would put a substantial dent in our business. Having said that, for many people it's a convenient way of talking to other people.

Have you seen IM use go up a lot in recent years? It has gone up, but I don't know that it's has gone up a lot.