GoldenSource is building on its core enterprise data management (EDM) capabilities to develop big data solutions, extend the concept of golden copy data, and grow its market footprint. It is also considering the possibility of initiating an EDM utility that would provide shared infrastructure and respond to client views that ‘the time has come’.
We recently caught up with GoldenSource CEO John Eley, to find out more about the company’s products, plans and markets. Eley noted three core themes the company is pursuing in response to market demand – data quality, reduced cost and future proofed solutions – and the need to use current technology tools, such as APIs and message buses for connectivity, to address the themes.
He said: “EDM players need to step up their spend on regulatory, data quality and new business solutions, and improve use of tools such as big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotics.” Considering emerging technologies, he cautioned: “Problem solving needs to be objective. What technologies are customers ready for and able to accept. You need to match the right technology to the problem.”
Playing this out, GoldenSource continues to base its security master data management solution, which is offered as a modular addition to the EDM base, on its traditional choice of the Oracle relationship database. Last year, however, it transferred other modules including market data and risk master to the Apache HBase Hadoop database, a distributed, scalable, big data platform that can manage and process huge volumes of data that are out of reach for relationship databases.
Big data solutions
Looking beyond these early transitions, Eley says: “We are building solutions for big data – time series, risk aggregation, market data, profit and loss vectors – that are agnostic to the technology of the underlying data store. The GoldenSource operating framework that came with version 8.7 of GoldenSource EDM allows us to develop functional solutions for these areas that can sit on top of Hadoop, Oracle, McObject’s extremeDB or any other data storage and access platform.”
GoldenSource EDM 8.7 was introduced in the summer of 2016 and upgraded to 8.71 in the summer of 2017, radically changing the user experience to provide greater empowerment and flexibility, and adding the company’s market data and product mastering solutions as fully integrated modules. At the same time, the company invested in additional data quality, internal processes such as data operations, and quality assurance, which were picked up by customers to use as infrastructure as a service, an unintended benefit of the developments.
Eley comments: “We are at the leading, not bleeding, edge of technology and meeting the need for data management in the middle and back office.”
Golden copy data
Turning to GoldenSource’s interest in extending the concept of golden copy data, Eley notes that the company’s market data module takes about 170 feeds from market data vendors, manages the interface with the vendors, allows users to select feeds, and creates golden copies of cleansed market data for consistent modelling and distribution. Similarly, the company is working to add golden copy data to the risk master model, perhaps covering pricing and risk factors.
More will follow, although Eley won’t be drawn on which of the EDM modules could benefit from golden copy enhancements going forward. That said, he notes that the company is experiencing demand for modules such as product master and entity master, which manages instrument product, counterparty and issuer data on a single platform.
EDM utility
The potential of an EDM utility is also on the drawing board, although that’s as far as it goes at the moment. Eley says: “Interest in a utility with shared infrastructure across the industry is rising and clients say it’s time to make this happen. We are uniquely positioned to start a utility as we have lots of customers on one platform. Existing customers could join first, and critical mass could be achieved when others join.”
Looking at how and why clients use GoldenSource technology, Eley says about 25% use hosted or cloud service versions of the company’s software, rather than onsite deployment, and expects this percentage to grow to about 50% over the next couple of years as clients increasingly favour services with SLAs above enterprise solutions. The ‘why’ question is answered by client need to achieve regulatory compliance, improve operational efficiency – perhaps by replatforming in the middle and back office – and drive down cost.
Traditionally, GoldenSource clients have emanated from Tier 1 sell-side and large buy-side firms, but the company is gaining more traction among Tier 2 and 3 buy-side firms that realise the need to get smarter. Here, the company offers Nexus, essentially an optimised EDM solution for the buy side that came to market late last year and won its first customer in March.
From a strategic growth perspective, Eley concludes: “We are looking to expand in Tier 1 sell-side and Tier 2 buy-side firms, as well as in Tier 3 buy and sell sides. We are also working with data repositories and exchanges and have more prospects in this space in the pipeline.”
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