The 2014 Tech 50: Robert Alexander

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

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Robert Alexander
Chief Information Officer
Capital One
Financial Corp.
Last year: 37

Capital One Financial Corp. is a $290 billion-in-assets bank holding company, but for chief information officer Robert Alexander, it’s all about technology. “What we’re focused on is how do we become a great software development organization,” says the U.S. Air Force veteran and former Bain & Co. consultant, who joined the McLean, Virginia–based bank in 1998 and has been CIO since 2007. “If you’re going to be a great software company, you have to have the network and hardware to support it.” The 49-year-old has gone so far as to brand his department Capital One Technology. The unit aims to bring top software engineering talent together in work spaces away from headquarters to encourage collaboration and creativity in an “agile development” environment. The bank is certainly up to speed on cloud computing and big data, using a private cloud along with public utilities like Amazon Web Services and Hadoop, an open-source platform for extremely large-scale processing and analytics. The technology group has been working on security and antifraud measures, mobile apps and online innovations including a feature that translates credit card billing disclosures into plain English. “If you’re not building it better, faster, more innovatively and creatively,” Alexander says, “then you’re going to get left behind.”

The 2014 Tech 50

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