< The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge
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Brian Sentance
Chief Executive Officer
Xenomorph Software
PNR
Big data didn’t go by that name — if it was even perceptible — in 1995, when Brian Sentance joined the founding team of Xenomorph Software. In 2015 the 35-employee, London-based company is as well placed as any to observe big data’s impact and help the financial industry turn the technology to its advantage. Sentance says Xenomorph got from there to here by understanding firms’ information-processing challenges, which, he contends, revolve around database capabilities as much today as they did two decades ago. “Problems with spreadsheets and data management may look different today,” the 49-year-old asserts, “but they are fundamentally the same problems.” They are complicated, however, by the sheer quantity of financial and market information; management demands for intraday or near-real-time risk reports; and tighter auditing, regulatory and compliance requirements. These largely postcrisis realities have driven adoption by top-tier financial institutions of Xenomorph’s TimeScape systems for enterprise data management, analysis and decision support, all enhanced by connections to data sources including Bloomberg, Markit and Thomson Reuters and by visualization aids like those of Aqumin and Tableau Software. “Our database model has always been very adaptable and agile and designed to enable new asset classes and product innovation,” says Sentance, pointing out how the architecture was built to last. Xenomorph’s and Sentance’s roots are in derivative markets — he headed a team at J.P. Morgan that developed pricing models for equity derivatives. In 1993, Sentance completed his Ph.D. in interest rate risk optimization at the Centre for Quantitative Finance, Imperial College London. His interest in joining Xenomorph was piqued when co-founder and chief technical architect Chris Budgen, formerly of Bankers Trust Co.’s equity and interest rate derivatives businesses, contacted Sentance seeking “knowledge of the business side to go along with the mathematics,” the CEO recalls.
See the full story, “The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge.”
The 2015 Tech 50
1. Jeffrey Sprecher 2. Catherine Bessant 3. Phupinder Gill 4. Lance Uggla 5. Robert Goldstein |
6. Shawn Edwards & 7. R. Martin Chavez 8. Deborah Hopkins 9. Stephen Neff 10. Adena Friedman |
11. David Craig 12. Daniel Coleman 13. Michael Spencer 14. Michael Bodson 15. Charles Li |
16. Chris Concannon 17. Christopher Perretta 18. Antoine Shagoury 19. Kevin Rhein 20. Neil Katz |
21. Lee Olesky 22. Richard McVey 23. Seth Merrin 24. Robert Alexander 25. Frank Bisignano |
26. John Marcante 27. Joseph Squeri 28. Lou Eccleston 29. Claude Honegger 30. Chris Corrado |
31. David Gledhill 32. John Bates 33. Michael Cooper 34. Gary Scholten 35. Sunil Hirani |
36. Hauke Stars 37. Brian Conlon 38. Jim Minnick 39. Lars Seier Christensen & Kim Fournais 40. Tyler Kim |
41. Jim McGuire 42. Steven O’Hanlon 43. Sebastián Ceria 44. Yasuki Okai 45. Stephane Dubois |
46. Mazy Dar 47. Brian Sentance 48. Mas Nakachi 49. John Lehner 50. Jock Percy |
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