Tuesday, 29 May 2012

Charting a course through data fog

Guest blog post by Sean Farrington, UK MD and RVP Northern Europe, QlikTech

Financial markets are experiencing a ‘data fog’. We are forever hearing about the increasing amount of data being generated, whether IBM’s comment about data volume doubling every two years for the average organisation, with that data needing to be managed for years, or Cisco’s recent prediction that there will be 15 billion connected devices by 2015 with a staggering amount of data traversing the networks as a result.

Too little thought is given to the amount of data (and sensitive data) being generated by the financial services, in my opinion. We know just how important access to data is for the financial services industry, however, as we work with over 250 financial service firms, including over 50 per cent of the Fortune global top 25. There have been several recent innovations in IT theory and we are continually working closely with the financial services firms to improve the algorithms and tools that help them gain access to relevant data so they can harness insights for business growth at the same time as providing increased transparency.

All too often, the focus is on big data and ensuring that all information is downloaded, stored and managed, in case of future regulatory requests and to mitigate political and legal risks. In our view, and judging by our customers’ needs in the financial sector, the focus should be on enabling organisations to empower their employees to harness data for insight and for business discovery. Backing data up and making it available for the long-term should happen regardless, but it’s the here and now that counts in the financial sector, and using IT and technology cleverly gives financial organisations the opportunity to collate data and analyse it to avoid repeating past mistakes as well as look for future growth opportunities.

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