(Previously Not Ranked) One of the latest rages in IT is cloud computing, or the migration of critical business functions out of data centers and onto utility networks, akin to the way Google operates. Cloud computing hasn’t been universally embraced, but if an enterprise as venerable as Thomson Reuters makes the leap, as it did in April with the Elektron data distribution network, then the cloud is no mere R&D sandbox.

Elektron is a “transformative” business engine for Thomson Reuters that is also open to clients and partners for their own processes and “to innovate with us,” explains Jon Robson, the markets division executive who, as president of enterprise, oversees such areas as pricing and reference data, middleware, and trade and risk management. Elektron’s high-performance infrastructure will “lower operating costs and massively improve throughput,” he says.

The initiative also represents a giant company staying nimble — a quality Robson, 51, has long prized. In the 1990s he founded fixed-income systems supplier MoneyLine, later MoneyLine Telerate, which Reuters bought in 2004, four years before the Reuters-Thomson merger. It isn’t enough just to be bold, Robson asserts: “We use innovative technology to create innovative business ideas. Otherwise it’s just buzzwords and me-too.”

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