Condusiv: The booming new field of legalized online gambling faces the same technological challenges as telco, finance, and other heavily data-driven industries.
GLENDALE, CA, February 18, 2019 – Football fans in three states legally bet almost $185.5 million on the recent Super Bowl game. According to figures released by gambling regulators in Nevada, people wagered $145.94 million on the game at the state’s 200 sportsbooks. Sportsbook operators in New Jersey accepted about $34.9 million in wagers, while fans in Mississippi bet around $4.67 million at non-tribal casinos.1 “One of the lures of sports gambling,” says James D’Arezzo, CEO, Condusiv Technologies, “is the ability to bet on a huge number of permutations: so many first downs in the second quarter, whether a quarterback will fumble in an upcoming pass rush, whatever it might be.”
D’Arezzo, whose company is the world leader in I/O reduction and SQL database performance, adds, “Accommodating these bets requires virtually real-time odds calculation and wager acceptance; in the background, the company’s IT department will be scrambling to keep up with the action.”
Prospects for the nascent legalized betting industry are substantial; it has been estimated that if retail and online wagering were to become accessible in all 50 states, legal sports betting in America could become a $16 billion business.2 At the moment, however, according to the American Gaming Association, the volume of illegal bettingan estimated 95% of total gambling on the 2019 Super Bowl-still dwarfs the amount going through sanctioned channels.3 But there are signs that this could be changing, and that there may be a large number of people who would be happy to place a bet on a sporting event but who do not want to commit a crime while doing so. A recent survey of Americans who live in states with legalized gambling show that 60% of those placing bets had never done so before.4
Meanwhile, however, the U.S. Justice Department’s recent decision to expand a federal prohibition on internet gambling is casting a pall on the industry. The government now says that the Interstate Wire Act of 1961 bans all gambling that involves interstate transactions. While sports betting was already specifically covered by the Wire Act, the Justice Department’s new ruling could place severe limitations on other activities of the gaming companies who run the sportsbooks. It is assumed, however, that DOJ’s ruling will be tested in a series of courts, and that some sort of accommodation will be reached that will allow a popular new pastime to flourish.5 As they expand and grow, D’Arezzo notes, the new online sportsbooks will be faced with the same effectiveness and cost issues that affect other highly data-intensive industries.
“One of the main problems,” says D’Arezzo, “is system performance degradation in accessing these huge databases, especially in the Windows environment. A temptation will be to throw money at the problem in the form of new hardware, but cumulative I/O sluggishness is primarily a software issue; more hardware isn’t the answer. A better bet is on targeted software solutions such as the ones we’ve developed at Condusiv. They can improve system throughput by up to 50% without the need for any new hardware.”
About Condusiv Technologies
Condusiv® Technologies is the world leader in software-only storage performance solutions for virtual and physical server environments, enabling systems to process more data in less time for faster application performance. Condusiv guarantees to solve the toughest application performance challenges with faster-than-new performance via V-locity® for virtual servers or Diskeeper® for physical servers and PCs. With over 100 million licenses sold, Condusiv solutions are used by 90% of the Fortune 1000 and almost three-quarters of the Forbes Global 100 to increase business productivity and reduce data center costs while extending the life of existing hardware. Condusiv Chief Executive Officer Jim D’Arezzo has had a long and distinguished career in high technology.
Condusiv was founded in 1981 by Craig Jensen as Executive Software. Jensen authored Diskeeper, which became the best-selling defragmentation software of all time. Over 37 years, he has taken the thought leadership in file system management and caching and transformed it into enterprise software.
1. Cano, Regina Garcia, and Parry, Wayne, “Fans in 3 states legally bet almost $185.5M on Super Bowl,” Associated Press, February 4, 2019.
2. Drape, Joe, “New Jersey Embraces Sports Gambling, and a Billion-Dollar Business is Born,” New York Times, January 29, 2019.
3. Perez, A.J., “Illegal bets still rule Super Bowl-even as more states offer regulated action,” USA Today, January 28, 2019.
4. Brown, Mike, “The Impact of Legal Sports Betting: 60% of Now-Legal Bettors Had Never Wagered Before,” lendedu.com., January 29, 2019.
5. Pettersson, Edvard, “U.S. Online Gambling Reversal Puts ‘Chill’ on Industry,” Bloomberg, January 14, 2019.
For more information, visit https://condusiv.com
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