Oracle has long been championing the capabilities of its Exadata Database Machine, which forms the foundation of a number of its other offerings such as the Financial Services Data Warehouse that was launched in January this year. Senthil Kumar, group vice president and head of global business development for financial services at Oracle, speaks to Reference Data Review about the recent applications of the solution and the benefits of a consolidated approach to data underlying the finance and risk functions.
Kumar explains that the vendor has recently deployed the Oracle Exadata Database Machine to enhance its real-time relationship pricing and billing solution, Oracle Financial Services Revenue Management and Billing 2.2. The implementation of the technology has allowed the vendor to conduct performance tests on the solution that have resulted in the processing of more than 1 billion transactions in under five hours and 100 million monthly invoices in 13 hours, thus proving the data processing capabilities of the solution.
Although this offering sits outside of the data management arena, it is yet another demonstration of the vendor’s appetite to use big data technology to improve its product set. To this end, Kumar explains that the vendor has also been working with key vendor partners to benchmark their technology capabilities, including those in the reference data space such as GoldenSource, Asset Control and Polarlake.
As for its own capabilities, Kumar indicates that there are five key pillars to the vendor’s product set: “The first is that we focus on the customer and we also bring to bear our experience of the transaction processing environment, so that it is a seamless process. We focus on risk management and performance measurement and bring all of the pieces together on the same platform. Our financial services data warehousing platform allows for the integration of all of the relevant data from various functions, including compliance, to this end. Our intention is to simplify infrastructure for firms to be able to scale to deal with increased volumes of data.”
He points to the trend for banks to be run as enterprises as a key trend within the market that means the chief financial officer and the chief risk officer are now both reporting to the same person within the management team. On that note, during Sibos week, Oracle also announced the results of a recent study conducted with the Association of Foreign Banks (AFB), which highlights that although most banks have implemented data warehouses, many still use spreadsheets further downstream. The aim of the vendor is therefore to tackle this sweet spot of a joined up and seamless approach to data across the enterprise and across key functions such as risk and finance.
Kumar indicates that one of the key trends from the research was the push from regulators to receive raw data direct from firms and the impact this is having on their IT systems. “Risk and processing of this data is at the top of the agenda within these institutions,” he explains. “Storing data in a centralised infrastructure and being able to simplify the risk calculation process for transparency purposes is therefore very important.”
He reckons Oracle’s ability to work with other vendors and the capabilities of its technology to plug and play with existing platforms will be key to the vendor’s success in this endeavour. “We do not require a rip and replace, our solutions can sit on top of and integrate with existing technology that has been deployed,” he contends.
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