Businesses can test-drive the industry’s best Big Data analytics and decision management tools to make operational decisions through FICO’s cloud-based infrastructure

FICO (NYSE: FICO), a leading predictive analytics and decision management software company, announced it is providing free 30-day trials of its best-in-class analytic tools in the FICO^® Analytic Cloud, a new web-based infrastructure for creating, customising and deploying powerful, analytics-driven applications and services. Users are able to conduct hands-on testing and experimentation with the FICO^® Solution Stack, FICO’s groundbreaking platform for Big Data analytics and decision management. They can also explore the FICO Analytic Cloud Community, where they can collaborate with peers and the FICO Analytic Cloud Marketplace to buy and sell analytic components, add-ons or complete turnkey decision management solutions.

The FICO Analytic Cloud gives application developers, business users and FICO partners around the world one-stop access to FICO’s best-in-class analytics and decision management tools and technology. These include software as a service (SaaS) applications for social and mobile customer engagement, targeted marketing campaigns and offers, delinquent account management and instant credit decisioning. The FICO Solution Stack, which features the FICO^® Decision Management Platform, analytic modelling tools and decision tool studios, helps bridge the gap between Big Data, analytics and decision execution.

“Businesses no longer have any excuses for basing important operational decisions on anything but data,” said Stuart Wells, chief technology officer at FICO.  “By democratising access to Big Data analytics, we’re making it possible for anyone in any size organisation to consume, contribute to and collaborate on analytic innovations, large and small, for the benefit of their own organisations and of the broader business community.”

“Not too long ago, deploying advanced analytics required massive investments in IT infrastructure and software, creating a barrier to broader adoption” said Brian McDonough, research manager, Analytics & Data Warehousing Software at IDC.  “The advent of new mobile devices, wireless networks, Big Data analytics and social networking has combined to create what IDC calls the Third Platform for long-term growth, driving the demand for powerful analytic services in the cloud.”

The FICO Analytic Cloud also offers a marketplace for analytically powered software components, solutions, applications and services, along with a community of analytic talent willing to collaborate and share knowledge and best practices.

The FICO^® Analytic Cloud is built on open-source technologies and leverages the latest industry standards, including Apache Hadoop, an open-source software framework; PMML, an XML-based language for predictive modelling; R, an open source analytic programming language and environment; Apache Lucene, a search engine library; and Apache Tika, a content analysis toolkit. The FICO Analytic Cloud is designed to support data transportability and open modelling best practices.