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CIO Values: Kevin Kometer, Managing Director And CIO, CME Group
Understand the business' needs and "deliver what's expected," Kometer advises.
3 Min Read
Career Track
KEVIN KOMETERManaging Director and CIOCME Group |
How long at current company: 12 years
Career accomplishment I'm most proud of: My role in the integration of the Chicago Board of Trade with CME to form CME Group. As deputy CIO at the time, I was the tech lead on that project. Most people don't get the opportunity to go through an effort like that, which touched the majority of the staff. Just after we completed the Board of Trade launch in January 2008, we announced we were acquiring Nymex (the New York Mercantile Exchange). In both cases, we had been providing technology services for the exchanges prior to merging with them.
Most important career influencer: Jim Krause, the previous CIO at CME who recently retired, had a lot of influence on my career. I worked with Jim my entire career. He passed on his knowledge more by example than anything else. In particular, he gave me an appreciation for the key measures that we use to gauge success: capacity, reliability, and performance.
Vision The next big thing for my business will be ... having an increasing number of exchanges using the CME clearing model. Our hope is that various counterparties will use our system and benefit from all the risk management capabilities we provide. Another big thing is globalization. That means we must provide more network connectivity for customers, using network hubs in multiple locations throughout the world.
Best advice for future CIOs: Collaborate and work closely with the business. You really need to understand their needs and deliver what's expected.
On The Job
IT budget (approximate): $175 million annual capital expenditure
Size of IT team: 850
Top three initiatives:
BM&F: We went live in October with a distribution agreement with BM&F (Brazilian Mercantile and Futures Exchange), where we're hooking up a distribution matching platform. All of CME's Globex users can enter orders on the BM&F platform, and eventually BM&F users will be able to enter orders on Globex.
Nymex: We're in the construction phase on integrating Nymex systems with CME
Data volume: We're battling an ever-increasing volume of market data by increasing bandwidth to customers and reducing the size of the data that we're sending to them by making messages smaller and using compression.
Personal
Colleges/degrees: Bachelor's in computer science and math from Northern Illinois University
Favorite sports: All major sports, water sports, jet skiing
Last vacation: Riviera Maya, Mexico, with wife
Smartphone: AT&T BlackBerry Pearl
If I weren't a CIO, I'd be ... a math or computer science teacher
About the Author
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