Q&A: How is big data transforming financial services?

Contributor: Neil Palmer

Contributor: Neil Palmer, global partner, advanced technology, SunGard Global Services

We’ve just crossed the half-year mark, and inarguably, one of the biggest buzzwords of 2012 so far has been “big data.” Several trends are beginning to emerge around big data that are poised to transform financial services. Much of this stems from our ability to now move beyond the traditional relational database models and unlock value in data like never before. Where firms may have discarded semi-structured or unstructured data in the past, today we can find new ways to utilize it – it’s all-encompassing.

Of course, we are in relatively early days now, with many organizations in exploration mode with regard to big data. Nevertheless, big data is giving financial services organizations an opportunity to address some major data challenges with regard to time and scale.

To delve into big data a bit deeper, Melanie Rodier of Wall Street & Technology and I joined together for a Q&A via Twitter. To see the full discussion about big data and how it’s transforming financial services, search for the hashtag #BigDataSG or simply read through the Q&A below. If you have your own question, leave us a comment.

How is Big Data Transforming Financial Services?

Melanie Rodier: Let’s begin the #BigDataSG Twitterview with @SunGard’s Neil Palmer @neilepalmer about Big Data. Follow #BigDataSG for the full Q&A.

Neil Palmer: Thanks @mrodier. Glad to be speaking with you today about #bigdata. Let’s get started. #BigDataSG

FS firms have handled vast amounts of data for decades. How is Big Data different from what they’ve been doing already? #BigDataSG

Scale, complexity & velocity. With relational database mgmt systems, large amounts of data were discarded…  Now we can keep all data & also handle semi & unstructured data without forcing it into a RDBMS model #BigDataSG

Can FS firms leverage any of their existing investments in databases & data warehouses when it comes to Big Data? #BigDataSG

Absolutely – RDBMS not going away. But we think it’s more they’ll be fed via #BigData systems rather than run in parallel #BigDataSG

Social media: useful for firms in mining Twitter/Facebook data for investment & trading opps or more of a marketing strategy? #BigDataSG

2 pieces to this –marketing side & underlying tech to allow analysis of relationships, which can be incredibly valuable… Twitter/Facebook have helped bring this tech to maturity; it’ll be interesting to see how they’re applied to finance #BigDataSG

What types of unstructured data could a financial firm analyze that would make a material impact to its biz? #BigDataSG

Text & video, news analysis, etc. would be good examples, but I think the big advantage is being able to…

mine huge amounts of data at costs previously not achievable. We’ll initially see more value from historical analysis #BigDataSG

What key resources/ strategies should smaller-sized FS firms employ to handle Big Data & ensure they don’t get left behind? #BigDataSG

We’ll start 2 see cloud-based offerings as smaller orgs get more comf with private/public cloud combos & their econs of scale #BigDataSG

How can global firms operating across multiple regions ensure they can analyze Big Data as effectively as possible? #BigDataSG

Couple diff approaches. 1 is to ensure right analysis is done in right geo location and housing that data there…

Approach 2 is using #Hadoop as a data transportation layer for global analysis via data requests that provide local analysis #BigDataSG

Are firms recruiting new talent to work on Big Data challenges? What skills are needed to land a job in Big Data on Wall Street? #BigDataSG

They are trying! 2 skill profiles: 1) specialists around particular tech or 2) statistical/quant to do pure data analysis #BigDataSG

What new technologies are emerging to support Big Data? Is this giving momentum to hardware acceleration and FPGAs? #BigDataSG

We’re seeing evolution in maturity of tech stacks both from enterprise operational view & from business user tools one… Key is building & merging tech – Neo4J 4 graph, Solr 4 text, Hadoop 4 processing, etc. Haven’t come across use of FPGAs yet #BigDataSG

How can firms effectively leverage #BigData to enhance their mobile strategies? #BigDataSG

It’s a 2way street – mobile driving huge growth in data; improved analysis of that data enables better services back to users… Services more context-driven (location/time) so firms can target customers specifically, like when you pass their store, etc. #BigDataSG

Thank you @neilepalmer for speaking with me about #BigData today. Great conversation, a very exciting area to watch. #BigDataSG

My pleasure @mrodier. For more #BigData, check out my recent podcasts with @versace57: http://bit.ly/MMbrVD #BigDataSG

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