The 2014 Tech 50: Simon Garland

< The 2014 Tech 50: Moving Out of the Lab and Into the Cloud

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Simon Garland
Chief Strategist
DBS Bank
Last year: 40

As data continues to get bigger, the need for speed to process and analyze it never abates — and that plays into the hands of Kx Systems. It explains why the likes of Goldman Sachs Group and Morgan Stanley keep re-upping for the Palo Alto, California–based company’s kdb+ database technology. Chief strategist Simon Garland, 59, is responsible for technical support and ensuring that Kx brings the latest high-performance hardware capabilities to bear. A Securities Technology Analysis Center benchmark test in June 2013 left no doubt: Kdb+ ran eight times faster than previous results for volume-weighted average price calculations on tick data. Garland noted then that kdb+ was ready-made for the growing number of clients’ cores, or processing units, devoted to “numerous applications, including faster algorithmic trading, pretrade risk and real-time analytics.” Accommodating what Garland describes as “millions and millions of records and petabytes and petabytes of data,” and with a 64-bit computing architecture and its own “q” programming language, Kx pursues proprietary innovation to outpace competing products. At the same time, Kx is opening up. In April it made “q” and the 32-bit version of kdb+ available free to encourage entrepreneurship on the platform and launched a community website for “tips and input from people other than us,” says Garland, who joined Kx in 2002 after working in the database search business and Credit Suisse’s risk management department.

The 2014 Tech 50Click name to view ranking profile.

1 Dave Cross	1	3 IAN CURCIO 2011	4 FayFoto/Boston	5 Teri Pengilley
Thomas Secunda Bloomberg	Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange	Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp.	Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments	Lance Uggla Markit
6	7	8 Photographer:Charlie Simokaitis	9	10 Mark McQueen
Robert Goldstein BlackRock	David Craig Thomson Reuters	Phupinder Gill CME Group	Anna Ewing NASDAQ OMX Group	R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group
11	12	13	14	15 Christopher Elston
Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures	Dan Mathisson Credit Suisse	Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings	Michael Spencer ICAP	Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.
16	17	18 Todd Plitt	19	20
Joe Ratterman BATS Global Markets	Dominique Cerutti Euronext	Ron Levi GFI Group	Gaurav Suri D.E. Shaw Group	Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing
21 Larry Lettera/ Camera 1	22	23	24 XT	25
Lou Eccleston S&P Capital IQ	Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets	Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings	Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings	Antoine Shagoury London Stock Exchange Group
26 Production	27 Wayne R. Martin	28	29 Thorsten Jansen	30 Adam B. Auel
Christopher Perretta State Street Corp.	Kevin Rhein Wells Fargo & Co.	Peter Carr Morgan Stanley	Hauke Stars Deutsche Börse	Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp.
31	32	33 Paul Elledge	34	35 Stephen Brashear
David Gershon SuperDerivatives	Chris Corrado MSCI	Joseph Squeri Citadel	Tanuja Randery BT Global Services	John Bates Software AG
36	37	38	39 Photo Credit: Kevin Irby	40
Gary Scholten Principal Financial Group	David Gledhill DBS Bank	Simon Garland Kx Systems	Cristóbal Conde FinTech Innovation Lab	Jeff Parker EidoSearch
41	42 Jeff Smith Photo	43	44	45
Kim Fournais & Lars Seier Christensen Saxo Bank	Kenneth Marlin Marlin & Associates	Tyler Kim MaplesFS	Jim McGuire Charles Schwab Corp.	Jim Minnick eVestment
46	47	48 tomohisa ichiki	49 David Poultney	50 A.E. Fletcher Photography
Steven O’Hanlon Numerix	Sebastián Ceria Axioma	Yasuki Okai Nomura Research Institute	Niki Beattie Market Structure Partners	Mas Nakachi OpenGamma