New FICO Software Enables Data Scientists to Transform Big Data into Predictive Mo

FICO Model Builder for Big Data integrates with Hadoop, Lucene and R to enable better decisions from massive and unstructured data sets

SINGAPORE — August 29, 2013 — FICO (NYSE:FICO), a leading predictive analytics and decision management software company, today introduced FICO® Model Builder for Big Data, the latest release of its powerful analytics tool. Model Builder for Big Data enables data scientists to rapidly discover, design and deploy predictive analytics models that find signals in unstructured and massive data sets and turn those signals into actionable insights.

Model Builder for Big Data brings proven machine learning and statistical data mining to Big Data for the first time, enabling analysts to find the predictive signals hidden in huge and challenging data sources. Its state-of-the-art text mining capabilities, unique Semantic Scorecard formulation, and embedded Lucene and Tika indexing and extraction libraries, provide powerful mining of text from a wide variety of document types, and boost the predictive strength of its transparent, easily understood scoring formulas. Model Builder for Big Data also integrates Apache Hadoop, the open-source framework for scalable, reliable, distributed computing and storage, and works with Cloudera’s proven, enterprise-ready Hadoop distribution. Along with new support for the popular R language for statistical computing and graphics, Model Builder brings a breadth and depth of functionality for Big Data that is both scalable and cost-effective.

“Modeling massive data sets can be challenging, because most traditional data analysis tools have been built for the ‘small data’ world, with highly structured, mostly numerical data,” said Stuart Wells, chief technology officer at FICO. “Today, data volumes are orders of magnitude larger, they defy a simple ‘rows and columns’ structure, and they’re mostly made up of messy, unstructured information like text, voice and even video. We have built Model Builder for Big Data to cope with this kind of unwieldy raw information, and make it into something meaningful and valuable.”

“Enterprise developers are increasingly managing massive amounts of data, content and information,” said James Taylor, CEO and principal consultant at Decision Management Solutions. “Existing technologies and techniques for predictive analytics are unlocking secrets previously hidden in enterprises' structured data, but there is an even larger opportunity if unstructured content can be tapped for additional decision-making insight."

FICO® Model Builder for Big Data is part of the FICO® Decision Management Platform, and is available on-premise and is expected to be available via the FICO® Analytic Cloud.