Brown says he finds it tough to get data in or out of systems or tie it to an existing business intelligence platform. "And you are forever stuck both paying for ongoing support and maintenance and possibly extra cost for consulting, integration, customized features," he says.

"There's no one right way to do risk management, there's not one set of input or output data, and that complexity becomes a big hurdle."

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This goes back to the open nature of the platform, Brown says. "If you are working on a closed/proprietary platform, it means that one of two parties is going to be responsible for all aspects of data integration and customization: the product vendor or the customer," he explains.

"With an open platform, you have a broader base of existing code to use and the ability to release your integration work to the community and gain additional users, support, and bug fixes. A collaborative, open platform helps create those economies of scale for the customer and also frees them from vendor lock-in."