For big data achievements, IT and analysts need to work together
photo: Albert Chau
Representatives at IBM and the New York Stock Exchange laid out a schematic for doing big data analytics and showed how it can work in practice. Read more »
Transferwise’s ‘peer-to-peer’ international money transfer system just got easier to use
Customers of the UK fintech startup can now use their debit cards on the site, instead of having to visit their online bank in order to initiate a transfer. Canadian dollars will soon be supported, too. Read more »
LinkedIn continues international growth, hits 200 million members
LinkedIn noted Wednesday that it’s hit 200 million members, a number to note as the company continues to grow and work to build its image as the professional network in contrast to sites like Twitter or Facebook. Read more »
Holvi prepares to roll out banking for teams across Europe in 2013
The Finnish financial services upstart has pulled in a new round of funding, with serial entrepreneur Thomas Madsen-Mygdal becoming a key backer and board member. Read more »
With new service, Nasdaq brings Wall Street data to Amazon’s cloud
photo: Shutterstock / emin kullyev
Nasdaq OMX is offering a new service called FinQloud for financial services clients that want to store regulatory data or analyze trade data using on-demand resources. Built atop Amazon Web Services, the service seems to be the result of a close partnership between the two companies. Read more »
Banking industry opens new FinTech accelerator in London
Following a successful first two years for the original FinTech Innovation Lab in New York, Accenture and its banking pals are trying to replicate the scheme in the world’s top financial center. Read more »
How big data might mean better business for big banks
By becoming an underwriter for some of the world’s largest banks and credit card companies, ZestFinance might actually be able to achieve its goal of using big data to supply the underbanked with needed credit. It’s not altruism by any means, but here’s how it works. Read more »
For ZestFinance, big data comes with big responsibility
ZestCash, the startup co-founded by former Google CIO and VP of Engineering Douglas Merrill to provide short-term loans to the underserved, has changed its name to ZestFinance and its business model, as well. Now essentially an underwriting service for lenders, can ZestFinance remain ethical? Read more »
Fat databases, small pipes: The problem of data inertia
photo: Pinar Ozger
As datasets get fatter and cumbersome, it’s becoming harder to move them around. Even the fattest pipes look like cocktail straws when you’re talking about petabyte databases. It’s getting more and more difficult to move these massive troves of data to the applications that use them. Read more »
BancBox: don’t just take payments, do something with them
BancBox is formally launching its payment platform today, offering not just the ability to accept credit card and other payments, but also hold the funds in stored accounts and move it around between financial institutions, all in compliance with regulatory requirements. Read more »
The cloud will cost you, but you’ll be happy to pay
Today, conventional wisdom suggests that cloud computing will bring increased efficiency to computing markets, which will then decrease costs. Cloud computing will allow organizations to cut IT spending and help relieve pressure on IT budgets. But that’s not going to happen. Read more »
Lending Club adds Mary Meeker to board, gets $15M from Kleiner Perkins
Lending Club, the peer-to-peer financing platform, announced Wednesday that it was adding Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Mary Meeker to its board of directors. Read more »
Sold for £87 million, but can MoneySavingExpert.com keep savers sweet?
photo: DECC
One of the poster boys for online specialist entrepreneurial journalism is selling to a price comparison website. But can independent personal finance guru Martin Lewis keep his legion followers happy? Read more at paidContent »
Citigroup’s massive scalability challenges, by the numbers
The concept of webscale computing gets a lot of attention thanks to the impressive scope of operations at companies like Google and Facebook, but one could argue there’s an even more-impressive tier of IT infrastructure: bank-scale. Here’s what scalbility means at Citigroup. Read more »
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Where consumer influencers hang out
A key objective of online social media marketing is to reach influential consumers and get them to pass the word. But marketers and advertisers have to find those influencers ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
How Hadoop can help keep your money in the bank
Banks and their customers are under constant threat from cybercriminals trying to get at their money, but at least one bank is using Hadoop to help ensure those attacks aren’t successful. And it has changed the face of its analytics efforts. Read more »
How Jeff Clavier will spend SoftTech’s biggest VC fund yet
Jeff Clavier’s SoftTech VC has closed investment on its third fund at $55 million, making Fund III its biggest fund yet.
Clavier talked to GigaOM about why SoftTech decided to go so big, how the new cash will be invested, and the larger tech industry landscape. Read more »
BillGuard pulls in $10M to expand its bill anti-virus service
BillGuard, a personal finance service that uses Big Data analysis and crowd sourcing to identify bogus charges, has been racking up accolades since it launched in May. And now it’s pulling in big money: $10 million from Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund and Innovation Endeavors. Read more »
NASDAQ network boss: ‘Lots of opportunity for new players’
According to Lou Modano, head of global infrastructure for NASDAQ OMX, there is “a lot of opportunity for new [hardware] players” to feed a ceaseless demand for ever lower latency in electronic trading systems. When you rely entirely on electronic trading, a faster system is key. Read more »
NYSE Builds a Specialty Cloud for Financial Markets
NYSE Technologies is rolling out a cloud platform for financial services firms that lets them provision infrastructure and access the suite NYSE Technologies trading services and market data. The cloud is built using a variety of VMware tools, as well as EMC storage products. Read more »
Square Hopes to Kill Cash Register With Square Register
Not two years after introducing the world to its little mobile credit card reader, Square is looking to write the obituary for the modern cash register–along with every location-based, daily deal and mobile payment app in existence with its new Square Register and Card Case. Read more »
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Putting Big Data to Work: Opportunities for Enterprises
Business and IT leaders now face significant opportunities and challenges with big data — that is data sets that are so large they are difficult to store, manage and analyze. This report explores the rapidly evolving big data business and technology ecosystem. It examines big data in the context of several different industries: financial services, health care, sports, travel and media. We explore the different big data technologies — from Hadoop and NoSQL derivatives to cloud-based collaboration tools — and their various benefits for enterprises. And we examine some of the existing challenges big data poses, and what enterprise IT leaders can do to overcome them. Companies mentioned in this report include Amazon Web Services, Google, Teradata, IBM and Cloudera. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
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Will Hadoop Vendors Profit from Banks’ Big Data Woes?
With companies — including the rich, technology-savvy banks — struggling to store and analyze their mountains of data, it pays to establish a foothold in the analytics market. For vendors utilizing Hadoop, the promise might be even ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Will Hadoop Vendors Profit from Banks’ Data Woes?
With many companies — including those in the rich, technology-savvy financial sector — struggling to store and analyze their mountains of data, it pays to establish a foothold in the analytics market. For vendors utilizing the capabilities of Hadoop, such a promise might be even sweeter. Read more »
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Is Tiered Data Access Unfair, or the American Way?
Caught up in a wave of pressure to make the banking industry pay for wrecking the economy, the SEC and a few prominent politicians have turned their collective gaze toward high-frequency trading (aka algorithmic or electronic or flash trading). Among the major criticisms of the ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
