First, a request, please consider joining The Big Data Contrarians.

I have worked with clients across the entirety of financial industry for most of my career, and although this may surprise some people, I believe that I fully understand why they are being conservative about Big Data in general and Hadoop in particular. I can also understand why some people want to keep up or even ramp-up even more the Big Data market buzz, but with such a dearth of meaningful, well described and verifiable Big Data ‘success stories’, neither the banks nor I are going to be speculating in any big way on Big Data or Hadoop, anytime soon.

Based in Spain for almost three decades, I have been up close and intimate with a few of the biggest players in the Spanish financial industry. Indeed, Spanish banks have not only lead the way in the effective, innovative and business driven use of technologies in the Spanish market, but have applied that financial industry nous around the world.

In recent times, the big financial players in Spain have entered into the Big Data fields and stratospheres. From what I know, which may not be all, or so much, they are still watching and investigating rather than putting tangible things in production. Nevertheless, there are some interesting Big Data application ideas floating around the financial world. These are still relatively early days for Big Data in finance, and it will take some time for the hype to fade away and the cream of financial Big Data to rise to the top.

However, it has happened before.

If there was ever a country that quietly, diligently and consciously implemented Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence, then it has been Spain. Spanish companies were not only early adopters but also early beneficiaries of implementing Data Warehousing. Not for nothing did Bill Inmon’s company Prism Solutions chose Madrid as a major hub for its European Data Warehousing consulting, sales and support activities. Bill being the father of Data Warehousing and Prism being one of his commercial babies.

As an aside, at Prism I had the opportunity of working alongside fantastic professionals and great people with knowledge, values and experience, such as Don and Katherine. That great gig, I will never forget.

Which brings me to this.

I knew what Data Warehousing would be good for, and amplified this knowledge through reasonable, rational and coherent ways of addressing a wide range of requirements. My aim was to support my claims with coherent, simple and verifiable examples of Data Warehousing success stories.

I knew how to explain Inmon’s Data Warehousing, in business, management and technical terms. I saw when a company could benefit from DW and also when a company was not ready for DW. However, try as I might, I cannot achieve the same intensity of understanding with Big Data. Believe me I have tried.

I’m not a contrarian just because, but isn’t it about time the Big Data BS babblers put up or shut up?

So, if you are like me, then join The Big Data Contrarians.

Many thanks for reading.