Emerging Technologies: The Risks and the Rewards

To download a copy of the entire special report, sponsored by Cloudera, Advent Software, Maxeler Technologies, CenturyLink, and Green Key Technologies, click on this link.

Question one of this five-part series
Question two of this five-part series
Question three of this five-part series
Question four of this five-part series

Participants:

• Carol Dow, principal, Vanguard Information Technology
• David Saul, chief scientist, State Street 
• Patrick Angeles, chief architect, financial services, Cloudera 
• Todd Gottula, executive vice president and CTO, Advent Software 
• Oskar Mencer, CEO, Maxeler Technologies
• Roji Oommen, managing director, Financial Services, CenturyLink
• Anthony Tassone, CEO, Green Key Technologies

Question: What are the risks and benefits ─ both anticipated and unforeseen ─ that emerging technologies present capital markets firms?

Todd Gottula, executive vice president and CTO, Advent Software: Changes in development tools and deployment methods like virtualization and cloud have really accelerated the development-to-implementation lifecycle. What used to take years now takes months. Firms that are willing to take the risk of adopting these new technologies are experiencing more deployment, getting features more quickly, achieving faster iteration cycles, and seeing solutions where mobile is baked into the technology itself.
The related risk here is that because the whole market is moving so quickly, the wrong choices have twice as much impact; the time you spend undoing mistakes is time a competitor can use to move further ahead of you.

"The biggest risk I see in the short term is firms standing on the sidelines, waiting for the opportunity to appear less risky. The problem with that approach is you are not learning while your competitors are. In addition, cloud computing dramatically lowers barriers to entry in many industries, inviting a wave of competitors who suddenly no longer need any infrastructure to compete, but can rather focus purely on selling with little or no overhead." ─ Anthony Tassone, CEO, Green Key Technologies.

Oskar Mencer, CEO, Maxeler Technologies: Emerging technologies bring different flavors of risk. Risk is very individual and offerings, which allow for customization to particular finance client needs, should be preferable to off-the-shelf, one-size-fits-all solutions, especially given the competitive environment in finance.

Anthony Tassone, CEO, Green Key Technologies: The benefits of emerging technologies, such as hosted VoIP, have the potential to provide better business services for less cost. The increased agility provided through infrastructure reduction and the ability to scale up and down as opportunities present themselves give firms a sense of confidence and the tools to step into new markets. In fact, this ability to manage capacity in real time is astounding and would have made Henry Ford glow with enthusiasm.
The biggest risk I see in the short term is firms standing on the sidelines, waiting for the opportunity to appear less risky. The problem with that approach is you are not learning while your competitors are. In addition, cloud computing dramatically lowers barriers to entry in many industries, inviting a wave of competitors who suddenly no longer need any infrastructure to compete, but can rather focus purely on selling with little or no overhead. It is important to plan and implement a cloud policy no matter how small it is to your business if for no other reason than to better understand your current IT strengths and weaknesses.
Although I am a proponent of cloud computing, I would encourage any firm considering the migration to walk before they run. Incremental adoption, along with a financial model blueprint, are key to a successful migration that will achieve organizational buy-in.

Roji Oommen, managing director, Financial Services, CenturyLink: We think the benefits are clear: an IT cost base that's reflective of the broader economic realities of the business. A more agile platform allows the business to respond quickly to rapidly changing conditions and to their competitors. In the near term, regulatory harmony across jurisdictions is a pain point, though we expect it to come together in the medium to long term.
Competitive differentiation will continue to be a big challenge for firms-technology aside-and as lower costs reduce barriers to entry, it will be harder for many firms just to scale their technology to remain competitive.

Patrick Angeles, chief architect, financial services, Cloudera: To be competitive in today's global business environment, companies must focus on growth and keeping costs balanced. But they must also innovate. New technologies are available today that offer views into customer behavior, sentiment, and historical trends. The companies that have discovered how to mine those insights across all of their data first, and have operationalized these capabilities, will be the ones to leapfrog their competition and model their businesses to drive new revenue streams. New technology resets the playing field. Is there risk? Always. That's why it's important to choose wisely in order to avoid investing in a technological dead-end.
Hadoop, which is open-source software for reliable, scalable, distributed computing, is broadly recognized across the industry. In today's hyper-connected world where more and more data is being created every day, Hadoop's breakthrough advantages are a perfect jumping-off point.