Snowflake supercharges Cboe’s analytics stack

Home to one of the world’s largest options exchanges and the well-known VIX volatility index, Cboe Global Markets Inc. operates at a massive data scale, processing hundreds of billions of messages each day. That scale demands infrastructure built for both breadth and precision, enabling an analytics stack that runs on nanosecond-level timestamps.

Cboe’s Ellen Taylor-Lubrano and Snowflake’s James McGeehan discuss analytics with theCUBE.

“We’re best known for our powerhouse US options business,” said Ellen Taylor-Lubrano (pictured, left), director of data and analytics at Cboe. “It’s based out of Chicago. We run the world’s largest options exchange. We also own related index products like the Cboe VIX. It’s often referred to in financial media as ‘Wall Street’s fear gauge.’”

Taylor-Lubrano and James McGeehan (right), head of banking, capital markets and payments at Snowflake Inc., spoke with theCUBE’s Rebecca Knight and Dave Vellante at Snowflake Summit, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the evolution of Cboe’s analytics stack, the power of the Snowflake Marketplace and what it takes to thrive in an industry where disruption is the norm and trust is non-negotiable. (* Disclosure below.)

Cboe’s analytics stack prioritizes a strong data foundation

Cboe began its cloud transformation in 2021, migrating from a Hadoop-based on-prem system to Snowflake. The transition unfolded through 2022 and into 2023, culminating in a full decommissioning of their legacy Hadoop environment. Alongside Snowflake, Cboe adopted Sigma Computing as its business intelligence platform, according to Taylor-Lubrano.

“In terms of our downstream analytics, that’s where cloud solutions and especially Snowflake have made a huge difference,” she said. “We want to be able to get that overview, but then we also need a platform that supports that granularity to just dive in there and get those targeted results.”

The foundation for AI success lies in modernizing data infrastructure. To unlock AI’s potential, companies must align technology investments with business priorities, focus on data trust and governance and deploy tools that drive efficient and accurate outcomes, according to McGeehan. For Cboe, this means treating data as a product and enabling its activation across business lines.

“People are demanding insights much more quickly and decision intelligence to stay ahead competitively,” McGeehan said. “The ability to scale, the ability to query data and bring models of choice and leave data at rest is creating much faster outcomes and time to value of data. We’re thrilled to be working with partners with such proprietary depth of data as Cboe.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Snowflake Summit:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Snowflake Summit. Neither Snowflake Inc., the primary sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE