FactSet plans to roll out additional elements of its cloud-based FactSet Data Exploration platform that will deliver a fully hosted application production environment over the next six months.
The company introduced the platform on Microsoft Azure this summer offering content from the Open:FactSet Marketplace as well as programming tools including Microsoft SQL, RStudio and Python. Its aim is to allow users to evaluate financial and alternative data sets and build investment applications efficiently without the need to invest in IT infrastructure to test and adopt new datasets.
Two months after the introduction of Data Exploration, which can be used by clients with or without FactSet terminals, Rich Newman, senior vice president and global head of content and technology solutions at FactSet, says the platform is gaining interest. This is coming from large buy-side asset managers and hedge funds, as well as sell-side investment banks and advisory firms.
The company plans to add more datasets including alternative data to Open:FactSet Marketplace for use in Data Exploration, although Newman notes the need to scrutinise all data before it is brought into the marketplace and integrate the data to provide a single data environment.
The platform’s roadmap moves on from offering access to data to providing a data testing environment in the cloud, then a research environment to which firms can add their own data, and finally a production environment fully hosted in the Azure cloud and managed by data scientists building investment applications.
Newman concludes: “The platform is designed to help firms build investment strategies that generate alpha. It supports speed of development by moving production into the cloud, while Azure provides unlimited capacity for clients to test data.”
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