Financial-i’s Leaders in Innovation Awards identify global transaction banks and financial hardware and software providers that in the last 12 months have excelled, in terms of innovation in business solutions. Award winners were selected based on research conducted by Financial-i's team of journalists as well as feedback received from their awards advisory panel, which includes industry analysts, consultants and practitioners.

Anita Hawser, editor of Financial-i magazine commented, “Financial-i chose PolarLake as a Leader in Innovation for Securities Reference Data as the specialist panel was impressed with PolarLake’s innovative approach to solving Data Management challenges using Big Data and Semantic Web Technologies.” 

Commenting on the award, PolarLake CEO John Randles said: “PolarLake are delighted to be recognised as Leaders in Innovation for Securities Reference Data by Financial-i. The market is now looking beyond traditional EDM technologies and is demanding true innovation. This award reflects the truly innovative breakthroughs PolarLake have made in Securities Reference Data Management.”

About PolarLake

PolarLake is a global leader in applying Semantic Web and Big Data Technologies to the Data challenges of the leading Financial Services firms in the world. PolarLake’s Platform enables these firms to acquire, manage and distribute Financial and Reference Data with speed, agility and control never before seen with traditional approaches. PolarLake provides the following Solution Suite:

• PolarLake Price Processing Solution
• PolarLake Security Master Solution
• PolarLake Cost Optimization Solution
• PolarLake Data Distribution Solution

PolarLake has been recognized by Industry Analysts as a leader in Reference Data Distribution and Integration, named by Aite as the most packaged Reference Data Distribution solution and included in the Gartner visionaries’ quadrant.

Financial Services Clients using our products include 6 of the top 10 Investment Banks, 2 of the top 5 Prime Brokers and 2 of the top 10 Asset Managers. Clients have used PolarLake to make in house and commercial Data Repositories easier to distribute and consume data from. Others have used PolarLake in the end to end Data Supply Chain, sourcing, linking, validating and distributing data.

For information

Enda Higgins, Marketing Executive, PolarLake

enda.higgins@polarlake.com

+353 1 449 1010

The award acknowledges PolarLakes achievement in producing the world’s first Semantics Based Data Management Platform for Financial Services Firms. The category was the most competitive of the evening with 12 other companies nominated for the award but PolarLake was selected because of its ability to innovatively apply Semantic Web and Big Data Technologies to solve Data Management problems in Financial Services Firms.

Commenting on the award PolarLake CEO John Randles said “The Data Management industry is constantly changing due to increased regulatory requirements and firms having to handle internet style scale and complexity. Financial Services Firms require a modern, high performance and flexible solution capable of handling more feeds, more demands and more consumers than ever before. PolarLake’s unique approach of combining Semantic Web and Big Data Technologies allows firms to tackle challenges that traditional Data Management systems weren’t built to solve.”

About PolarLake

PolarLake is a global leader in applying Semantic Web and Big Data Technologies to the Data challenges of the leading Financial Services firms in the world. PolarLake’s Platform enables these firms to acquire, manage and distribute Financial and Reference Data with speed, agility and control never before seen with traditional approaches. PolarLake provides the following Solution Suite:

• PolarLake Price Processing Solution
• PolarLake Security Master Solution
• PolarLake Cost Optimization Solution
• PolarLake Data Distribution Solution

PolarLake has been recognized by Industry Analysts as a leader in Reference Data Distribution and Integration, named by Aite as the most packaged Reference Data Distribution solution and included in the Gartner visionaries’ quadrant.

Financial Services Clients using our products include 6 of the top 10 Investment Banks, 2 of the top 5 Prime Brokers and 2 of the top 10 Asset Managers. Clients have used PolarLake to make in house and commercial Data Repositories easier to distribute and consume data from. Others have used PolarLake in the end to end Data Supply Chain, sourcing, linking, validating and distributing data.

For information

Enda Higgins, Marketing Executive, PolarLake

enda.higgins@polarlake.com

+353 1 449 1010

 The PolarLake Solution Suite includes:

• PolarLake Price Processing Solution: Including an out of the box Data Management Workstation Application, the PolarLake Price Processing Solution enables rapid exception management and validation of multiple vendor sourced and internally sourced Prices. It also includes a pricing tolerance rules engine, is optimised to process 3000 prices per second, SLA management and an event schedule management system.
• PolarLake Security Master Solution: Delivers a next generation Security Master solution with Post Relational approach to building Golden Copy Security Master. Has enabled clients to on-board over 300 unique feed formats in less than three months.
• PolarLake Cost Optimization Solution: Complete inventory management of vendor sourced Data enabling cost optimization of the Data Supply Chain. Also includes cost allocation reporting.
• PolarLake Data Distribution Solution: Alternative to home grown ETL based Data Distribution frameworks; PolarLake’s Data Distribution Solution supports batch, real time, request reply, pub sub and ad hoc distribution across multiple protocols.

Commenting on the release, PolarLake CEO John Randles said “In Data Management we have moved to a world of Internet scale complexity, more feeds, more demands, more consumers than ever before. This is why PolarLake have applied Big Data and Semantic Web technologies where the older approaches are no longer fit for purpose. The PolarLake Solution Suite will help Financial Services firms take advantage of advances in Big Data and Semantic Web without having to start from scratch”

About PolarLake

PolarLake’s Data Management Platform enables some of the largest firms in Financial Services to acquire, manage and distribute Financial and Reference Data with speed, agility and control with embedded Security not seen before in the Data Management Market. Financial Services clients using PolarLake products include 6 of the top 10 Investment Banks, 2 of the top 5 Prime Brokers and 2 of the top 10 Asset Managers. Clients have used PolarLake to make in house and commercial Data Repositories easier to distribute and consume data from. Others have used PolarLake in the end to end Data Supply Chain, sourcing, linking, validating and distributing data.

Contact

Enda Higgins

Marketing Executive PolarLake

Enda.Higgins@polarlake.com; +353 1 449 10 10

The alliance will combine PolarLake’s unique RDM software with Capgemini’s vast financial services domain expertise and global delivery capabilities to provide existing and prospective clients in financial services markets significantly improved data management platforms that add scalability and efficiencies. This offering will also help clients cut down on the considerable costs associated with updating and maintaining complex, legacy enterprise data management systems that are often custom-made. As part of this alliance, Capgemini will establish PolarLake Centers of Excellence at its Global Delivery Centers.

Increases in regulatory pressures, the need for clean reference data and verified transparency around sourcing and management are compelling companies to retrofit their data management capabilities, which can lead to higher total cost of ownership. The agreement between PolarLake and Capgemini will provide organizations with a reference data management solution that is specifically designed to meet these growing needs and provide a platform to meet future needs.

 “Financial institutions worldwide are under pressure to find solutions to achieve compliance, gain efficiencies, reduce costs and add product delivery capabilities that will enable them to remain competitive in capital markets,” said Aloke Paskar, Head of Capital Markets Business Unit, FS GBU Capgemini.“Capgemini established an alliance with PolarLake to combine its unique platform with our global execution capabilities, allowing our customers to implement data management solutions that encourage speed to market, flexibility and extensibility this competitive market demands.”

 “Our partnership with Capgemini will help current and future clients manage their enterprise wide data management and distribution platforms with increased agility, speed and adaptability while empowering the business and IT,” said John Randles, CEO, PolarLake.

About PolarLake
PolarLake’s Data Management Platform enables some of the largest firms in Financial Services to acquire, manage and distribute Financial and Reference Data with speed, agility and control with embedded Security not seen before in the Data Management Market.

Financial Services Clients using PolarLake products include 6 of the top 10 Investment Banks, 2 of the top 5 Prime Brokers and 2 of the top 10 Asset Managers. Clients have used PolarLake to make in house and commercial Data Repositories easier to distribute and consume data from. Others have used PolarLake in the end to end Data Supply Chain, sourcing, linking, validating and distributing data.

About Capgemini

With around 115,000 people in 40 countries, Capgemini is one of the world's foremost providers of consulting, technology and outsourcing services. The Group reported 2010 global revenues of EUR 8.7 billion. Together with its clients, Capgemini creates and delivers business and technology solutions that fit their needs and drive the results they want. A deeply multicultural organization, Capgemini has developed its own way of working, the Collaborative Business Experience^TM, and draws on Rightshore^®, its worldwide delivery model.

Learn more about capgemini at www.capgemini.com.

Rightshore^® is a trademark belonging to Capgemini

About Capgemini’s Financial Services Global Business Unit

Capgemini’s Financial Services Global Business Unit brings deep industry experience, innovative service offerings and next generation global delivery to serve the financial services industry. With a network of 17,000 professionals serving over 900 clients worldwide, Capgemini collaborates with leading banks, insurers and capital market companies to deliver business and IT solutions and thought leadership which create tangible value.

For information

Enda Higgins, Marketing Executive, PolarLake

Enda.Higgins@polarlake.com

+353 (0) 1 449 1010

Marcus Behrend has joined PolarLake as Business Development Manager for Central Europe. Marcus has over 10 years’ experience in the Financial Services industry and has joined PolarLake from RR Donnelley, formerly Bowne, where he held the position of Product Development Manager, EMEA.

Commenting on the opening of the German office, PolarLake CEO John Randles said “We see the German market as key to the development of PolarLake's business. Central Europe represents a great opportunity for PolarLake and the demand for a next generation, modern Data Management platform to meeting the needs of Asset Managers, Investment Banks, Custodians and Administrators is as great in Central Europe as anywhere else in the world. Marcus’s experience, industry knowledge and impressive sales record will prove a great asset to PolarLake as we continue this expansion.”

About PolarLake

PolarLake’s Data Management Platform enables some of the largest firms in Financial Services to acquire, manage and distribute Financial and Reference Data with speed, agility, control with embedded Security not seen before in the Reference Data Management Market.

PolarLake has been recognized by Industry Analysts as a leader in the Reference Data Distribution and Integration space, named by Aite as the most packaged Reference Data Distribution solution and included in the Gartner visionaries’ quadrant.

Financial Services Clients using PolarLake products include 6 of the top 10 Investment Banks, 2 of the top 5 Prime Brokers and 2 of the top 10 Asset Managers. Clients have used PolarLake to make in house and commercial Data Repositories easier to distribute and consume data from. Others have used PolarLake in the end to end Data Supply Chain, sourcing, linking, validating and distributing data.

But there is one area seldom mentioned which is a key to successful Enterprise Software implementations – the upgrade path. With most successful Enterprise Software systems the initial implementation is a small fraction of the overall lifetime of interacting with the product. Therefore it’s surprising that the issue of product upgrade gets so little airplay when trying to find differentiators between Data Management products. This is a huge issue when you consider a lot of the value proposition of commercial Data Management offerings is to maintain connectors / adaptors / feed handlers to Data Vendors. As Data Vendor feeds evolve more and more rapidly over the lifetime of a Data Management Platform then you can see why the upgrade path becomes the key issue, not an afterthought.  This is especially significant with vastly more feeds and more rapid feed changes happening than 10-15 years ago, when the current relational Data Management approaches evolved.

Upgrades are crucial in understanding the real value delivered by annual support and maintenance, particularly in the little understood world of “Data Vendor adaptor support”.  The client pays for updates to “Data Vendor Adaptors” which change when the Data Vendor feeds change (new fields, feeds, renames etc.). But what good is your new upgraded adaptor when you don’t take the relational data model upgrade, which is configured to the new adaptor? And when you look at upgrading the “Data Model” you discover that it has been invariably so customized and localized that any “upgrade” becomes a re-implementation of the product. This causes the Data Vendor adaptor support value proposition to fall through the floor as clients end up doing the adaptor maintenance themselves.  The key problem then becomes the underlying technical infrastructure isn’t upgradable and therefore can become obsolete over time.

This is why a lot of seemingly straightforward Data Management product upgrades turn into a fully blown RFP processes. It is also why many traditional support and maintenance contracts end up being cancelled as the value proposition becomes more and more tenuous with each passing year from the original implementation. Maintenance ends up being done in house when the upgrade becomes a daunting new project. Some even try to re-implement with the vanilla “out of the box, un-customized newer version” only to re-discover that it is completely and totally unusable in the real world “un-customized”.

This issue is really a continuation of a theme we have been running on why it is important for large organizations to own, control the core intellectual property of their “Data Model” or “Data Semantics” as we prefer to describe it. The difficulties in upgrading and getting true value from the commercially supported Adaptor and Data Model solutions is one of the main reasons why a lot of firms are looking to new approaches to Data Management or end up building their own. The idea that a large firm can migrate its business to a 3^rdparty Data Model and wait patiently for upgrades is just plainly unworkable and has resulted in much frustration from the end users. And all the market’s focus is now on scalability in many directions and dimensions – volumes, business requirements, regulations and operations – and all with never ending demand to decreasing costs at the same time. This is why the old 3^rdparty Relational Data Model approaches are no longer sustainable.

We believe that firms need to concentrate on the Semantics and Business uses of their Data and not be distracted by technology infrastructure. Technology infrastructure is what software vendors, like PolarLake, look after and allow firms to concentrate on the core intellectual property and what makes their business different to their competition. The next generation of Data Management Platform based on Semantics and Big Data Technologies do not suffer from these legacy limitations and have learnt from the past. In future the client should be able to concentrate on the Data Semantics, which is what their business is really about and leave the plumbing to the software vendors.

So the next time you get a sales pitch on a Data Management Platform ask the vendor to set aside the glossy slides and talk to about upgrades, not just implementations.

To learn more about how Semantic Data Management can address the challenges of the traditional problems of Relational Data Models please contact us.

Commenting on the release Warren Buckley, founder and CTO of PolarLake said, “The Investment Banking and Asset Management communities are facing new levels of transparency requirements from Regulators when it comes to Financial Data. Regulators will be keen to know what you knew and when you knew it about particular Data Entities.  They will also want to know when your view of that Data Entity changed over time, with detailed history of the changes.  PolarLake’s core architecture is a great fit for the demands of Bitemporal Data. Our unique use of semantic technologies means that the entire lifecycle of Financial Data Entities over long periods of time can be fully captured, understood and reported against in the PolarLake Platform with no special coding.”

About PolarLake

PolarLake’s Data Management Platform enables some of the largest firms in Financial Services to acquire, manage and distribute Financial and Reference Data with speed, agility and control with embedded Security not seen before in the Data Management Market.

Financial Services Clients using PolarLake products include 6 of the top 10 Investment Banks, 2 of the top 5 Prime Brokers and 2 of the top 10 Asset Managers. Clients have used PolarLake to make in house and commercial Data Repositories easier to distribute and consume data from. Others have used PolarLake in the end to end Data Supply Chain, sourcing, linking, validating and distributing data.

For information

Enda Higgins, Marketing Executive, PolarLake

Enda.Higgins@polarlake.com 

Based on the Research and Development activities of PolarLake this new capability will enable an Internet style search capability across any number of Reference Data sources.  The product also enables firms to define their own linkages, meta data and data dictionaries over multiple sources in a simple to use application. The product enables Business Analysts and Risk Analysts to get a complete view of opinions of security master, credit risk, pricing and corporate actions data across all their vendors in seconds from a current and historical perspective.

John Randles CEO PolarLake commented: “We have clients going live with over 25 vendor and internal feeds indexed, linkable and searchable in seconds, as people expect in the world of Internet Search. We have completed implementations with the major Data Vendors and Credit Data vendors in a matter of weeks.  We believe all opinions from data vendors are valid and should be respected, not discarded as per the traditional EDM approach. This new search capability will enable real insight and analysis of data assets which have been traditionally very difficult to search and mine.  As data volumes explode and regulations across historic and current data become more and more pronounced, search will be the killer app for Reference Data Management. Search is also the key component for true Reference Data Analytics.”

About PolarLake

PolarLake’s Data Management Platform enables some of the largest firms in Financial Services to acquire, manage and distribute Reference Data with speed, agility, control with embedded Security not seen before in the Reference Data Management Market.

PolarLake has been recognized by Industry Analysts as a leader in the Reference Data Distribution and Integration space, named by Aite as the most packaged Reference Data Distribution solution and included in the Gartner visionaries’ quadrant.

Financial Services Clients using PolarLake products include 6 of the top 10 Investment Banks, 2 of the top 5 Prime Brokers and 2 of the top 10 Asset Managers. Clients have used PolarLake to make in house and commercial Data Repositories easier to distribute and consume data from. Others have used PolarLake in the end to end Data Supply Chain, sourcing, linking, validating and distributing data.

For information

Enda Higgins, Marketing Executive, PolarLake

Enda.Higgins@polarlake.com 

The important thing to understand with this proposition is the market segment the solution is relevant for. If we are talking about smaller Asset Management companies and Hedge funds with a few feeds and asset classes, the commercial data model might be a good fit and have the required superset of attributes, adaptors, relationships etc. built into its model. However if the problem seems too small (say a couple of feeds for a couple of asset classes) then it might be easily addressed by a cheaper home grown solution, not a mallet to crack a small nut.  Conversely at the other end of the market in Global Investment Banks, Custodians and Investment Managers the likelihood of the commercial data models having a superset of the data requirements is extremely low. This is particularly true when you consider the impact of Globalization and the growth in importance of emerging markets and niche / local data vendors on the Tier 1 organizations. The footprint of these organizations across the world will never be matched by the “superset” theory of the commercial data models. 

Another major issue with commercial data models is how these models are managed through the full lifecycle of upgrades and evolutions over 15-20 years.  A core element of the commercial EDM value proposition is based on having a set of data vendor adaptors maintained and upgraded together with the underlying model (can’t have one without the other). This requires the underlying data model to be upgraded to support the upgraded adaptors and vice versa. It is interesting to contrast the data model upgrade experience with other domains, such as the world of ERP applications. Reference Data in Financial Services firms can be easily defined as being very dynamic in nature (multiple vendors / data sources, identifiers, cardinalities, and conflicting classifications with lots of changes driven by data vendors, the business and regulators). Contrast this with the ERP world (relatively static inputs determined mainly by the application vendor) and you can see it is a very different data management problem and therefore data model maintenance problem. The maturity and capability to upgrade ERP applications isn’t just a function of the billions of dollars spent on R&D (that helps obviously) and almost 40 years of experience. The fundamental difference is that in ERP implementations the application vendor largely controls what data is input stored and managed making it a vastly simpler Data Management problem. The underlying ERP data problem requires periodic large scale upgrades to the data model, or major releases which are in themselves large scale projects.

The EDM vendors have for too long tried to make the world believe that a far more complex data problem to ERP could successfully mimic its approach to large scale upgrade of data models. This is why you don’t often hear of a routine upgrade to a Security Master implementation, but it turns into a new implementation and vendor selection process. And no matter how much a firm “implemented according to best practice and vendor guidelines” it is not going to be a straightforward upgrade as advertised. Think about it, in the ERP world the application vendor controls the data inputs and upgrades are notoriously difficult. In Reference Data Management nobody controls the data inputs (N-different data vendors) so upgrades are by definition more complex than the most complex ERP upgrades. So is the easy upgrading of vendor Reference Data Models an unsolvable problem? Quite possibly.

This is what leads to the attraction in Globalized firms for building and maintaining the data model themselves. Without a virtually automatic upgrade path (which doesn’t exist) a commercial data model can be a liability and can constrain the business and make it run to someone else’s timeline and priorities. Large firms need to own their model and control its destiny, not for competitive advantage as argued in the past, but to keep control of its evolution for a Globalized business. They also understand the difficulty in a model upgrade path and do not want to be tied to monolithic releases promised at some stage in the future. Their businesses are just vastly more complex than anything they can buy off the shelf. Also very few large firms think they can learn a lot about data modelling the securities business from a third party software company, and they are probably right!

At PolarLake we believe there is a third way. If you would like to learn how these classic problems can be addressed through genuine technology innovation and the use of semantics technologies please get in touch. 

The platform enables the acquisition, management and distribution of vendor and internally sourced Reference Data. Already being used by a number of tier 1 Financial Services firms, the platform enables, data loading 11x faster, queries 17x faster and on-boarding of new data feeds 20x faster than RDBMS based Data Management systems.

John Randles CEO PolarLake commented: “The PolarLake Data Management platform has been the result of multiple engagements with tier 1 Financial Services firms and builds on our leading capability in Reference Data Distribution. This solution addresses the problem of scale and insight needed for the next generation Reference Data infrastructure. This is a truly disruptive approach to Reference Data Management, based on post relational semantic web technologies. Data load time, query time, ability to onboard new feeds quickly, meet many and conflicting requirements of Data consumers – these are the challenges large firms are facing with older systems designed for a different era. This platform is applying Internet scale “Big Data” technologies to the Reference Data for the first time in this market.”

Mary Knox, Gartner Research Director commented:  “Industry requirements for performance, scalability and availability have changed considerably over the past several years, due to factors such as: burgeoning volumes of reference data; the introduction of more-complex instruments and risk and compliance requirements; globalization, resulting in firms being active in more markets with their own associated reference data sources to be managed; reference data management initiatives that centralize reference data within individual firms, resulting in single systems being required to handle more of the firm's total volume of reference data, creating more-complex data governance processes to be maintained, and straining underlying data distribution and related capabilities.”

Liam Ó Móráin of the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), a world leading research centre on semantics, commented “semantics will be the future way that information is described, shared and integrated. This approach and technology has huge potential to solve the complexity issue in Data Management in Financial Services. From our work in academia and interaction with leading users of this technology in industry we see PolarLake’s use of semantics as having the potential to be transformational in terms of how people think of, implement and manage Data Management and Distribution in Financial Services.

About PolarLake

PolarLake’s Data Management Platform enables some of the largest firms in Financial Services to acquire, manage and distribute Reference Data with speed, agility, control with embedded Security not seen before in the Reference Data Management Market.

PolarLake has been recognized by Industry Analysts as a leader in the Reference Data Distribution and Integration space, named by Aite as the most packaged Reference Data Distribution solution and included in the Gartner visionaries’ quadrant.

Financial Services Clients using PolarLake products include 6 of the top 10 Investment Banks, 2 of the top 5 Prime Brokers and 2 of the top 10 Asset Managers. Clients have used PolarLake to make in house and commercial Data Repositories easier to distribute and consume data from. Others have used PolarLake in the end to end Data Supply Chain, sourcing, linking, validating and distributing data.

For information

Enda Higgins, Marketing Executive, PolarLake

Enda.Higgins@polarlake.com

+353 1 449 1010