Data analytics to drive global financial markets: Sapient

NEW DELHI, INDIA: As the new regulatory framework is expected to roll out in 2013, impacting the financial markets worldwide, Sapient Global Markets - a part of Sapient Corporation - believes that data analytics in tandem with Big Data will play a key role in meeting the mandatory guidelines.

Abhishek Bhattacharya, Director - technology at Sapient Global Markets,  said that the total amount of data is expected to grow to 2700 exabytes during 2012. "We see Big Data as a growing trend in global markets and with new regulation coming in 2013, there will be a massive impact," he said.

Bhattacharya feels that Big Data is all about variety and velocity of data. "From descriptive to predictive and now prescriptive, analytics trends are evolving today," he said. The challenges related to Big Data in global market include trade and transaction data, contracts and documents, market data, opinion, research and social media," he added.

In the next five years, Big Data would be top priority for every market, though only a few in capital and commodities market have started making investments in it, the company said. Sapient has a development center in India, and also offer consulting services. It also feels that Big-Data driven architecture would stay in future.

Data management and real-time analytics, Bhattacharya feels, would be a core to financial markets. "Advisory in-memory technologies allows more real-time processing and Hadoop/map-reduce technology allows parallel processing using commodity hardware," he said.

Sumit Sharma, VP at Sapient Global Markets said that they have clients in every segment of the financial sector. "We cover all facets of trading and risk management that include advisory, analytics, operations and technology," he said. Sharma said that governments worldwide are coming up with new regulations to watch trading activities, which he believes facilitate technology investment.

Sapient believes that Big Data analytics in global markets is expected to accelerate and new skills would be developed, and a new breed of Data Scientists would emerge. The commodity markets services firm said that regulations are forcing companies to provide analytics and insights, and the sector is poised for a paradigm shift.