Change is Coming... But This Time, It's Change For The Better

And in many ways, these past 10 years have been the decade of reference data and data management. From struggling to make its voice heard in the early 2000s, reference data has─driven, in no small part, by the demands of new regulations─emerged as an autonomous practice within most firms, and some of its key proponents have personified that recognition by taking on c-level roles befitting the importance of data within financial organizations as chief data officer.

As a result of data management's rapid maturing, the space has proved to be one of the most exciting in terms of companies─old and new─bringing new products to market to serve new requirements as they emerge. And given how the face of the reference data industry has changed over this timeframe, it's time for us to change how we cover it, as we merge the print editions of Inside Reference Data and Inside Market Data into one monthly, glossy magazine.

Why are we doing this now? Our research shows that how our subscribers consume information has changed─not just from when Inside Market Data was first conceived in 1985 as Micro Ticker Report, but just in the past few years. Like market data, consumers now expect to receive time-sensitive news as via the fastest means possible─which means online and via apps─with printed publications reserved for longer articles that provide deeper analysis. You may have noticed that in IRD and IMD, we often publish a short, timely news item as soon as we receive the information, and update it online over the following days, and publish a longer, more complete version in the next print edition. Inside Data Management is the next evolution of this, adding longer-form analysis articles, features and profiles.

This doesn't mean IRD and IMD are going away. Our websites will continue to bring you daily news just as they do today. In fact, if you subscribe to just IRD, you'll also get access to IMD─and vice-versa─free of charge until your next subscription renewal. And in the meantime, you'll receive Inside Data Management in place of the IRD and IMD newsletters. Print journalism isn't dead, as is often reported; it's evolving, just as the industry we cover is evolving.

And we couldn't be ending IRD's print run on a better note to illustrate the importance of reference data: for example, the fact that erroneous reference data forced Euronext to delay trading, or that Goldman Sachs has developed its own resource language to enable the firm to leverage cloud computing resources for managing reference data, and regulation-related issues such as the European Securities and Markets Authority releasing possibly its final guidance before the go-live date for MiFID II, and the emergence of "Regtech." The emphasis on regulation is no surprise. While regulations may not have been conceived specifically with data management in mind, their impact has forced firms to smarten up their acts. Anyone who didn't have a firm grasp of their data beforehand for good business practice has recently found themselves needing to for compliance purposes, because demonstrating that firms are complying with new rules is ultimately a data issue: being able to find the data to demonstrate compliance, format and provide it to regulators, and to automate and replicated that process at scale ultimately relies heavily on good data management.

Just like IRD's news coverage, these issues aren't going anywhere. In fact, they are the fuel that will drive Inside Data Management's content into the next decade and beyond.