ON THE NATURE OF DATA.
By Diwakar Goel, Head of Aladdin Data & David Woodhead, Head of Aladdin Studio Engineering
How we think about data has often been up for debate. For instance, is it a commodity? A utility? And we have heard so many platitudes, analogies, and metaphors on the changing role of data within our lives as consumers and the businesses we contribute to.
Going beyond those conversations, one thing is clear: data is the foundation needed to embrace evolving technology. Firms need their data strategy in place to ensure that they can keep innovating, leverage new tools, and keep pace with industry changes, all while ensuring their clients’ data is protected and safe.
Today, more people are using more data in more ways than ever before. This increased appetite—everyone wants access to everything—will dramatically change the landscape and raise new challenges.
What does that entail? One core aspect is governance, which boils down to: you’re going to use data to inform decisions—operational, financial, or regulatory—but do you trust that data? Or maybe you’re going to use that data in an AI model. Do you have the IP permissions to use that data?
While managing large volumes of data has become easier, it’s led to new considerations around operations and risk. And investing in the right tools to manage factors, ranging from information security parameters to regulatory compliance, is table stakes.
What’s more, the notion of a data network is poised to be transformational. Firms will be able to securely access all of their own data across providers in one place. Regulatory requirements, too, can be monitored through such a network. And a common method of data sharing across platforms can help support enterprise-wide integrity, bringing an array of disparate stakeholders and groups into one platform-agnostic community.
And that’s a key concept in this evolution over the next five or so years: communities will be built around data. That’s the foundation that will propel future innovation, whether it’s building better strategies to embrace emerging tech or fueling new product development.It is that foundation that can differentiate industry leaders and create new commercial opportunities. What information will you offer the network and what will you choose to keep internal? Will you contribute some premium information to the ecosystem if it can be monetized? How will you think about collaboration with partners?
There’s massive potential for data producers and consumers alike. But the path toward success requires meticulous due diligence, rigorous governance, and a strong security mindset. For example, how do you ensure you are relying on uncompromised information? How do you ensure data is properly clean and representative? And how do you ensure it is used correctly? While not new questions, these will be all the more important to get right going forward.
ALADDIN INNOVATIONSFrom data solutions to new tools powered by AI, the Aladdin® platform team is focused on building new innovations on top of the stable foundation of our data strategy.
We expanded Aladdin® Data Cloud’s data network capabilities, enabling clients to bring their own data into ADC, and to distribute Aladdin data to their own data ecosystems.
In 2023, we built an enterprise data platform to modernize how we acquire, cleanse, store, manage, and distribute the enormous volume of data for each Aladdin® client.
Meanwhile, within eFront® Insight, the synergies of AI and machine learning enable clients to extract valuable information from diverse, unstructured documents within their environment. This includes PDFs containing quarterly financial reports and capital account statements, as well as Excel files housing schedules of investments. The streamlined approach provides private markets investors with organized, accessible, and insightful data to inform their investment decisions.
Separately, the Aladdin Wealth™ platform leverages Spark, Snowflake, and other high-scale data processing tech to dynamically aggregate data and analytics for millions of client accounts—while driving actionable insights at enterprise scale.
