The ease of access and favorable economics of cloud computing only begin to explain the revolution it is enabling, according to Michael Cooper. The 54-year-old, who has been watching the cloud unfold since he joined Radianz in 2001, says the technology provides "the ability to implement significant changes quickly, to experiment ad infinitum and with more certainty." The startup's shared telecommunications infrastructure was a precursor of cloud utilities, like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, that emerged later in that decade. Radianz's specialization in financial services made it attractive to the U.K.'s BT Group, which bought the company from Reuters Group for $175 million in 2005. BT Radianz Cloud now offers a high-performance network connecting thousands of global institutions and market participants accessing applications and services from more than 400 providers. This year BT completed the purchase of IP Trade, a provider of unified communications technology for trading floors. Cooper, BT Radianz's chief technology officer since 2010, says that "it is obligatory for anyone in this industry to focus on security and the cyberthreat landscape," noting that BT commits significant resources to cybersecurity.
 1. Adena Friedman NASDAQ  2. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp.  3. Robert Goldstein BlackRock  4. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange  5. Lance Uggla IHS Markit |
 6. Shawn Edwards & Vlad Kliatchko Bloomberg  7. David Craig Thomson Reuters  8. Michael Spencer NEX Group  9. Don Callahan Citigroup  10. Elisha Wiesel Goldman Sachs Group |
 11. Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.  12. Terrence Duffy CME Group  13. Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing  14. Sean Belka Fidelity Investments  15. Chris Concannon CBOE Holdings |
 16. Guy Chiarello First Data Corp.  17. Steven Lieblich Citadel  18. David Rutter R3CEV  19. Blythe Masters Digital Asset Holdings  20. Alfred Spector Two Sigma Investments |
 21. Neil Katz D.E. Shaw Group  22. Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets  23. Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings  24. David Gledhill DBS Bank  25. Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings |
 26. Antoine Shagoury State Street Corp.  27. Peter Brown & Robert Mercer Renaissance Technologies  28. Lou Eccleston TMX Group  29. Peter Cherecwich Northern Trust Corp.  30. Mike Chinn S&P Global Market Intelligence |
 31. Chris Corrado London Stock Exchange Group  32. Neal Pawar AQR Capital Management  33. Gary Norcross Fidelity National Information Services  34. Steven O'Hanlon Numerix  35. Sebastián Ceria Axioma |
 36. Brian Conlon First Derivatives and Kx Systems  37. Tyler Kim MaplesFS  38. Michael Cooper BT Radianz  39. Robert Schifellite Broadridge Financial Solutions  40. Jim Minnick eVestment |