IBM Cognos Finance Forum 2013 - 20 June - It is a good elephant in the room

I was delighted to be invited to speak on Big Data in finance by UK based Budgeting Solutions, as it appears that many in the finance field are still (often rightly) sceptical about so called 'Big Data'. They have seen multiple definitions, got all excited when they heard the software was 'free', because it was open source, and then scared when told the analysis was best done outside the organisation's boundaries in 'the cloud'. Finally when they went looking for some meaningful information at a conference or exhibition they find the 'logo' (for Hadoop) is a yellow elephant that belonged to the child of Cloudera's founder Doug Cutting.

Whilst I recognise that many of my finance colleagues are not as 'serious' as the stereotypes would have us believe, we rely on the presumption that they are naturally conservative in nature and like to work on facts and evidence. Certainly not on hype and definitely not on fashionable logos. We like finance people to be innovative and open, but 2008 onward has shown us what happens when some get too 'creative' and ignore the conservative instinct.

On Thursday I wont be bringing a yellow elephant, and I may not wear a tie, but I hope I can show some great examples how Big Data is more than a fad, and has a great deal to offer the finance community in making better and less risky business decisions.