Fintech in 2017: Risk management takes center stage

A day in the life of the gentleman banker was once described by the 3-6-3 rule – accept deposits at three percent, loan money at six percent and tee off at the golf course at 3 p.m. The financial services industry can rightfully state that it has come a long way since then. It has implemented technological innovation and managed risk in a constantly changing economic environment over several decades. The gentleman banker has since evolved into a sophisticated financial risk manager who works within a complex framework of rules and regulations with tens of trillions of dollars of assets under management.

Fintechs have moved at a much faster pace than banks in some areas. They have disrupted the financial services industry with user-centric solutions enabled by technology. These solutions emulate products and services offered by financial institutions. However, these remarkable examples of innovation have largely ignored the elephant in the room – regulation.

The Sand Hill 25 Bitcoin Innovative Disrupters

Bitcoin — the Internet currency, payment system and technology — is about the birth of a new “digital” monetary ecosystem. Bitcoin bypasses traditional banks and clearinghouses with blockchain technology. Like every innovation it creates new regulatory and compliance challenges. There is growing interest in knowing where the money has come from and at the same time the anonymity of bitcoin makes creating an data trail a tricky task, but it’s possible to say whether certain bitcoin addresses are involved in mining, or have been associated with gambling transactions.

More recently, nationally known merchants like Overstock.com, Zynga and the Sacramento Kings basketball team have begun to accept Bitcoin payments. Even political candidates are taking donations through the system. Worldwide transaction volume keeps growing, as does the number of Bitcoin users.

Bitcoin is built on some heavy and complex data-crunching.  Like any ecosystem, it will have its share of winners and losers. The Bitcoin “Innovative Disrupters” are those that have the best odds at being winners. 

Bitcoin: Mad, Bad but not a Fad

Do Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies provide opportunities for innovative entrepreneurs to create real value? Bitcoin has proponents and naysayers. What is it really about?

The 18^th century philosopher Voltaire, a proponent of the separation of church and state, is known to have said that the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman nor an empire. We could say the same about Bitcoin as a virtual cryptocurrency.

Cryptology has an important role to play in Bitcoin, but that is not its defining feature. Currency is historically built on the recognition of national boundaries and their associated political constructs. Moreover, the words “crypto” and “fiat” are not opposites.

2015 Year in “PreReview” in Technology

The summer of 2015 marked the release of the blockbuster Sci-fi movie, “Terminator Genisys,” which grossed a record $350 million at the box office and further popularized the notion of time travel. In addition to sequels and prequels, Hollywood has now adopted plots for movies in which the audience can choose among alternate storylines and follow them to their logical conclusion. The future, as we know it, is plural. This year in our PreReview of 2015, we once again present a few alternative scenarios for the future from our vantage point at the end of 2014.

New business models created by emerging technologies and unforeseen partnerships dominated the headlines in 2015.  Trending technologies such as the Internet of Things approached half the level of big data during 2015. Trending terms in the mainstream media such as drones and Bitcoin scored high in Google trends.

Here are three headlines from 2015 that caught our attention.

FedEx launches “parcelopter” service for 50-minute delivery 

The Sand Hill IoT 50 Needle Movers

In this summer’s blockbuster movie “Edge of Tomorrow,” a PR executive played by Tom Cruise goes through innumerable time loops to become a soldier by being reborn every time he is killed. In the context of software startups, successful products are built through repeated testing and improvement. Those that can do the most iterations without dying become the needle-movers.

The evolving Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem presents opportunities for startups that can create sustainable solutions. Further to our article, “Internet of Things Needle-Mover Opportunities,” we looked at companies that will form the basic foundation of technologies that address the following five IoT challenges:

• Privacy and security
• The power barrier
• Data analytics and management
• Interoperability and integration
• Governance

The Internet of Things: Opportunities to Move the Needle

The automated vote-counting machine was designed by Thomas Edison in 1869 to replace roll call voting in the U.S. Congress and was never used. The motor scooter was designed in post-war Italy to be a motorcycle for women and became a revolutionary transport mechanism for a larger population. The Java programing language was originally designed in the 1990s for use by set-top boxes. And eBay was created to sell Pez dispensers. History has many examples of how original use case definitions became irrelevant in the face of market economics. Like any other new technology, the Internet of Things (IoT) will create an ecosystem with its share of winners, losers, survivors — and needle movers.

Today, use cases abound on how the IoT’s connected devices can create economic value. Some analysts talk about white spaces of solutions that span industrial, commercial and consumer applications. Others talk about fundamental challenges in delivering on the promise of IoT. While white space use cases will have hits and misses, IOT-enabling technologies represent a much larger opportunity for innovative value creation.

Big Data Performance Anxiety and Data Grids

In Memory Data Grid (IMGD) is a data structure that is being increasingly cited as a solution to the problem of scaling big data applications. Unlike in-memory applications, IMGDs distribute only the data across RAM over multiple servers.  With memory prices continuing to fall and the volume of data for an application continuing to rise, solutions based on memory are looking more attractive to manage the performance bottlenecks of applications using Big Data. Should IMGD be on your radar screen for a Big Data application?

In order to understand this and other questions on IMGDs, Carpe Datum Rx spoke to Miko Matsumura, VP of Marketing and Developer Relations at Hazelcast, who has seen recent adoption of this technology in banks, telcos and technology companies. Here is an extract from our discussion.

Why is it so important to distribute data in a data grid? Why should it be In-memory?

2014 Year in PreReview for Big Data Analytics

In the movie “Minority Report,” set in 2054, Tom Cruise plays the captain of the “PreCrime” police force, which uses “precognitive” abilities of mutants to stop crime before it happens. Silicon Valley futurists have sometimes used this reference in the context of the art of the possible with Big Data. We have another 40 years to go to see how analytics can accurately forecast future events based on human behavior. Meanwhile, imagining the future with some level of accuracy is within our reach today.

Value creation in the data economy made headlines in 2014. While Big Data continued to be the buzzword of the year in 2014, solutions that created economic impact were center stage.  Trending terms such as “predictive analytics” and “advanced analytics” approached the levels of “Big Data” on Google Trends during the year. “ROI,” which was vaguely referenced in the last two years, became the most commonly used term with Big Data in 2014. Here is a cross-section of 2014 events.

Apple announces TopsyTV

This is their next-generation TV appliance that integrates social media engagement with the TV watching experience. Earlier in 2013, Apple acquired Topsy Labs, a reseller for Twitter content for $200M. This was followed by a series of less publicized acquisitions of social media data companies. Apple is characteristically tight-lipped about its plans for monetizing this product with advertising, but speculation is rife that Apple is poised to get a piece of the $600 billion that is spent on advertising today.

Blessed are the Mid-Markets, for they shall Scale Big Data

In a parody of Start Trek, Silicon Valley technology companies describe their business goal as “Scale, the final frontier…”.  Mid-market companies, defined as those having 100-2500 employees, may indeed provide an opportunity to emerging technology vendors to scale their business. According to Techaisle, a market research firm, these 800,000 global companies spend $300B on IT and are sought after by technology vendors big and small. In the last decade, technologies such as Cloud, SAAS and Virtualization have reached scale with a large number of mid-market companies as early adopters. Intuit, Salesforce.com, NetSuite and Amazon are just a few examples of companies who have relied upon mid-market companies as a key building block for their business.

What does this mean for Big Data? To find out, Carpe Datum Rx spoke to “SMB Guru”, Anurag Agrawal, CEO of Techaisle and the former Head of Worldwide Research Operations at the Gartner Group. Techaisle recently talked to 3,300 global businesses about their Big Data adoption plans. Here is an excerpt from our discussion.

The SMB Market is considered the Holy Grail for technology vendors because it is hard to penetrate. Does your research show that mid-market companies will adopt Big Data before large enterprises do? Are they the early adopters of this technology?

Big Data needs a good storyteller….like Gary Vaynerchuck

In an episode of Mad Men, Don Draper talks about pitching the Kodak Carousel. “Technology is a glittering lure, but there is the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash, if they have a sentimental bond with the product….Nostalgia. It’s delicate but potent. Switch it on.”

Combine the storytelling prowess of Don Draper with the high-pitched vitriol of Jim Cramer and add a dose of emotional intelligence to get Gary Vaynerchuck,  social media guru, best-selling author, wine librarian and marketer par excellence of the internet age. Gary Vaynerchuck rose to prominence in social media a few years ago with his video log, wine library tv which he used to grow his family wine store into a mulit-million dollar business. He currently runs VaynerMedia, a social media strategy and production company.

Gary is an avid supporter of the use of quantitative analytics in marketing. Carpe Datum Rx caught up with Gary to ask him a few questions about big data, marketing and technology adoption in the enterprise. Here are his paraphrased comments.

Is Big Data ready for the 99 per cent ?