< The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge

Capital markets firms and their regulators are aggressively deploying big-data analytics tools to detect or mitigate rogue trades and flash crashes before they hurtle out of control. John Bates was working on such solutions long before the industry came calling. While at the University of Cambridge in the 1990s, the computer scientist co-founded Apama, whose complex-event-processing technology can ingest and act upon massive quantities of data in small fractions of a second. Initially applied in algorithmic trading, Apama’s CEP was found to be just as useful for compliance, risk management and market surveillance, A case in point is an abuse-detection system released last year for foreign exchange benchmarks. “Risk compliance is becoming the No. 1 topic on CEOs’ agendas. People have realized these systems all need to work together,” says Bates, 45, who has ridden along with Apama through two acquisitions: in 2005 to Progress Software Corp. of Bedford, Massachusetts, and in 2013 to Darmstadt, Germany–based Software AG, where he is now chief marketing officer and industry solutions leader. As he strategizes about enterprise software and big data, Bates is pondering the Internet of Things, which is the subject of his recent, Software AG–published book, Thingalytics. He is enthusiastic about the potential for “digitizing the real world and incorporating it into the digital world.” But, he warns, the “superfast algorithms” underlying the Internet of Things — like those in capital markets — “cannot run unsupervised.”

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The 2015 Tech 50

1. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange 2. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. Methanol Gains Traction as an Alternative Energy Source Sponsored by CME Group May 5, 2025 3. Phupinder Gill CME Group 4. Lance Uggla Markit 5. Robert Goldstein BlackRock

6. Shawn Edwards & Vlad Kliatchko Bloomberg 7. R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group 8. Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures 9. Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments 10. Adena Friedman Nasdaq OMX Group

11. David Craig Thomson Reuters 12. Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings 13. Michael Spencer ICAP 14. Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. 15. Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing

16. Chris Concannon BATS Global Markets 17. Christopher Perretta State Street Corp. 18. Antoine Shagoury London Stock Exchange Group 19. Kevin Rhein Wells Fargo & Co. 20. Neil Katz D.E. Shaw & Co.

21. Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets 22. Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings 23. Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings 24. Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp. 25. Frank Bisignano First Data Corp.

26. John Marcante Vanguard Group 27. Joseph Squeri Citadel 28. Lou Eccleston TMX Group 29. Claude Honegger Credit Suisse 30. Chris Corrado MSCI

31. David Gledhill DBS Bank 32. John Bates Software AG 33. Michael Cooper BT Radianz 34. Gary Scholten Principal Financial Group 35. Sunil Hirani trueEX Group

36. Hauke Stars Deutsche BÖrse 37. Brian Conlon First Derivatives 38. Jim Minnick eVestment 39. Lars Seier Christensen & Kim Fournais 40. Tyler Kim MaplesFS

41. Jim McGuire Charles Schwab Corp. 42. Steven O'Hanlon Numerix 43. Sebastián Ceria Axioma 44. Yasuki Okai NRI Holdings America 45. Stephane Dubois Xignite

46. Mazy Dar OpenFin 47. Brian Sentance Xenomorph Software 48. Mas Nakachi OpenGamma 49. John Lehner BNY Mellon Technology Solutions Group 50. Jock Percy Perseus