Wake-Up Calls

As a new father, I'm getting used to being alerted to very pressing and immediate needs. That also appears to be happening in the feature stories we present to you in this issue, covering topics such as semantic data, trade identifiers, front and back office data dialogues, non-display data usage and also the ever-present topic of big data.

Semantic data technology, as David Newman of the EDM Council tells us, is catching the industry's attention for the operational benefits it can provide. Semantic technology can be used to present data in a way that both people and machines can understand. That makes it more likely that firms can cost-effectively identify and monitor data, by using logical concepts.

The European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR), which includes trade reporting requirements that took effect February 12, as noted in last month's issue, has gotten the industry's attention by establishing Unique Trade Identifiers (UTIs). Nicholas Hamilton delves more deeply into what is involved in working with UTIs. UTIs have been a challenge, in part because specifications for them were incomplete right up until the day before the EMIR deadline. For many firms, this last-minute bit of guidance required them to revise the working definitions they had come up with based on the little they knew.

Front and back offices have had a longstanding rivalry and mutual suspicion-or even mutual contempt. Nonetheless, reference data professionals are taking notice that navigating this divide is increasingly necessary to make constructive progress on their issues.

A policy recommendation issued by a FISD working group is the opening salvo of what could become a fight over fees to obtain non-display data. FISD's Business Issues Policy and Procedures (BIPPS) group asserts that delayed and end-of-day non-display data should have lesser or no fees compared to what is charged for real-time non-display data. The group's reasoning is that less timely forms of this data are neither valuable nor trackable. But the group's membership includes exchanges, some of whom would certainly like to be charging more for all forms of data generated by their activity.

Why does big data still puzzle some in the industry, and face barriers to adoption? That's another facet of data management attracting attention. In "Work in Progress," we hear about how and why many firms are revising their big data strategies.

One final alert: coinciding with this issue, Nicholas Hamilton has been promoted to deputy editor of Inside Reference Data, in well-deserved recognition of the expertise he now has in this subject matter and his excellence in translating developments and news for you. Congratulations to him.