Bloomberg Enters Enterprise Data Management Market Through PolarLake Takeover
Data information giant Bloomberg has put its foot squarely in the enterprise data management arena in agreeing to acquire Dublin headquartered PolarLake for an undisclosed pricetag.
The move is considered a rarity for Bloomberg which admits that it typically relies on in-house development. Bloomberg says the addition of Polar Lake will allow firms to better manage higher volumes of data from multiple sources, either internally or externally. "Our customers are looking for new ways to reduce the cost of managing data while adhering to increasing regulatory requirements for transparency," says Dan Doctoroff, Bloomberg's chief executive in a statement.
The PolarLake unit will become a subsidiary of Bloomberg and fall under it new Enterprise Data Management unit. However, it will be run independently so usage of data will not be reported back to Bloomberg. Officials at Bloomberg won't disclose just how many clients PolarLake will bring on board or how many employees are involved but says PolarLake's senior management will continue to report to Chief Executive John Randles. He, in turn, will report to Roseann Palmieri, head of Bloomberg's EDM team which is part of Bloomberg's enterprise products and solutions group. Mark Pesonen, global head of Bloomberg's enterprise products and data group calls PolarLake a best-of-breed company and a good cultural fit.
On its website, PolarLake touts contracts with six of the top 10 investment banks, two of the top five prime brokers and two of the top ten asset managers. Among its suite of offerings relying on the same platform architecture are a security master package, a data distribution package, a price processing package and a "virtualized" data warehouse which allows customers to create business lines to link data across repositories and search quickly for data with no impact on applications.
Enterprise data management-- managing the quality, distribution and governance of data -- is becoming more significant for financial firms -- as reducing risk and complying with more stringent regulatory guidelines comes into effect. Still, as shown by a recent study conducted by the EDM Council, the trade group advocating enterprise data management most of the progress has been made on either a project or business unit level. Financial firms are still struggling with setting up consistent data quality metrics, semantics and governance across their business lines.
Bloomberg is the second information vendor to have entered the EDM space. Markit, best known for data and valuations on swaps and fixed-income securities, has just acquired London-based EDM firm Cadis. Bloomberg won't comment on its potential competitive edge against rival Thomson Reuters which recently confirmed it is winding down its enterprise data management business to concentrate on its pricing, valuations, corporate actions and other reference data offerings.
Written by Chris Kentouris, Editor-in-chief (Chris can be contacted through Chris.Kentouris@hotmail.com)
