Snowflake Summit 2025 | James McGeehan, Snowflake & Ellen Taylor-Lubrano, Cboe Global Markets

Clips
More from Snowflake Summit 2025

Ellen Taylor-Lubrano

Director of Data and Analytics

Cboe Global Markets

James McGeehan

Head of Banking, Capital Markets & Payments

Snowflake

play_circle_outline Introduction of speakers and their roles at Snowflake Summit 2025

play_circle_outline Transition from on-prem data platform to Snowflake for scalability and efficiency

play_circle_outline Partnership with Snowflake for data access, integration, and value creation in financial sector.

play_circle_outline Monetization of data products in Snowflake Marketplace for financial industry

Info
Transcript

James McGeehan, Snowflake & Ellen Taylor-Lubrano, Cboe Global Markets

Ellen Taylor-Lubrano

Director of Data and Analytics Cboe Global Markets

James McGeehan

Head of Banking, Capital Markets & Payments Snowflake

In this Fireside Chat from Snowflake Summit 2025, James McGeehan, head of banking, capital markets and payments at Snowflake, and Ellen Taylor-Lubrano, director of data and analytics at Cboe Global Markets, join theCUBE’s Dave Vellante and John Furrier to unpack how a modern AI Data Cloud is reshaping global markets. The conversation spotlights Cboe’s four-year journey to centralize massive, multi-asset datasets on Snowflake and the new revenue streams emerging from Snowflake Marketplace listings.

Taylor-Lubrano shares how Cboe’s consolidated platfor... Read more

explore Keep Exploring

What is Cboe Global Markets and who is the director of Data and Analytics Analytics there? add

What platform did you migrate to in 2021 to replace your on-prem data platform based on Hadoop? add

What role does data access and integration play in the financial services industry, particularly in relation to seeking and gaining investment alpha? add

What platforms and marketplaces does the company operate within for sharing and listing data? add

bolt Powered by CUBE AI

James McGeehan, Snowflake & Ellen Taylor-Lubrano, Cboe Global Markets

search

Rebecca Knight

>> Hello everyone and welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of the Snowflake Summit 2025 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, alongside my co-host and analyst, co-founder of theCUBE, Dave Vellante. We have a really fun conversation ahead. I'd like to welcome James McGeehan, head of banking, capital markets and payments at Snowflake. Thank you so much for coming on the show, James.

James McGeehan

>> Pleasure to be here.

Rebecca Knight

>> And Ellen Taylor-Lubrano, director of Data and Analytics Analytics at Cboe Global Markets. Thank you so much, Ellen.

Ellen Taylor-Lubrano

>> Thank you. Lovely to be here.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah, so I know you gave a session on Monday here. I want to hear all about that, but before we do, tell our viewers, for the unannointed, a little bit about Cboe Global Markets and what you do, what you're all about.

Ellen Taylor-Lubrano

>> Sure. So Cboe is a global financial derivatives and exchange network. We operate deliver trading, clearing and investment solutions across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. We're best known for our powerhouse US options business. It's based out of Chicago. We run the world's largest options exchange. And then we also own related index products like the Cboe VIX. It's often referred to in financial media as Wall Street's fear gauge.

Rebecca Knight

>> So the world's largest options exchange, that's a large amount of data that you are dealing with on a daily basis. Talk a little bit about your data challenges.

Ellen Taylor-Lubrano

>> Oh, absolutely. To give you a sense of that. So on any given trading day, all of our platforms, our trading systems together will be processing hundreds of billions of messages through those systems. And yeah, it is a lot of data.

Dave Vellante

>> So I'm just looking it up now. I first talked to, it was then the Cboe in 2010, and I just looked up the gentleman's name, I couldn't remember him, but he was like an infrastructure kind of database, data warehouse guy, and I'll never forget it, and I just wrote it down. He was educating me on the challenges of managing all this data and he said, "We can't keep up. It's like a snake swallowing a basketball every time something changes." And the other thing he said that resonated with me is, "We are just chasing the chips. Every time Intel comes out with a new chip, we glom onto it because it just helps us catch up a little bit," and then it's again that whole snake swallowing of basketball again. So that was this endless cycle that there was no way out of it at the time. A lot's changed since 2010.

Ellen Taylor-Lubrano

>> A lot has changed.

Dave Vellante

>> So what's the world look like today? How do you keep up?

Ellen Taylor-Lubrano

>> I mean, for starters, our trading systems are on-prem. They're going to continue to be on-prem for the foreseeable future. Our extremely low-latency, high-throughput requirements, pretty much demand that. But in terms of our downstream analytics, I mean that's where cloud solutions and especially Snowflake has made a huge difference. So we process data with timestamps now down to nanosecond precision, and we need to have both that breadth and that depth. We want to be able to get that overview, but then when we need to, we need a platform that supports that granularity to really just dive in there and get those targeted results.

Dave Vellante

>> Okay. So you're probably still chasing chips, faster is always better. Storage is cheaper now than it used to be. But in thinking about the analytics platform, can you take us through your Snowflake journey? I mean, you gave a talk about this earlier this week.

Ellen Taylor-Lubrano

>> Absolutely.

Dave Vellante

>> We'd love to hear that story, the condensed version.

Ellen Taylor-Lubrano

>> Sure. So in 2021, we had a fully on-prem data platform, it was based on Hadoop and we needed something that would scale a lot better, so evaluated a few different options. It was almost certainly going to be cloud-based and came onto Snowflake. One of the big points that Snowflake offered was that cohesive package, they had all the puzzle pieces. So there are a lot of providers that provide the puzzle pieces and Snowflake really puts those together in a way that are as usable out of the box, but still provides an immense amount of flexibility and customization to adapt to specific needs of the customer. So since then we did 2022 Snowflake migration a little bit into 2023. And then at that point we also decided to change our BI platform and went with Snowflake Partner Sigma Computing. So that migration we undertook last year and that's been an amazing success. So I think in 2021 we had about 400 users of our BI platform, it's about a quarter of the company. And as of this year with our new platform, I mean powered by Snowflake and also Sigma, I mean we have about 900 users now and that's half of our company, so many more business units. So just-

Dave Vellante

>> So a lot more insights getting-

Ellen Taylor-Lubrano

>> Absolutely...

Dave Vellante

>> helping people make decisions. The 2022 to 2023 Snowflake migration was from Hadoop?

Ellen Taylor-Lubrano

>> Yes.

Dave Vellante

>> So Hadoop, did you actually shut it down or you still got a little Hadoop?

Ellen Taylor-Lubrano

>> We did-

Dave Vellante

>> That little elephant running around, no more?

Ellen Taylor-Lubrano

>> We don't.

Dave Vellante

>> The elephant's gone?

Ellen Taylor-Lubrano

>> Nope, that's... We don't like tech burden, we don't like maintaining parallel systems. We made sure that we did it, we did it cleanly and yeah, now a Snowflake shop.

Dave Vellante

>> Well congratulations because it's hard to get rid of stuff sometimes in tech, as we know. Interesting story. Are you hearing similar stories in the financial services sector?

James McGeehan

>> Yeah, 100%. Ellen's hit it right on the head. But let's be candid, what's happening and changing in the world? Everything's changing. Uncertainty is rife, data volumes and everything's digitized. Data volumes are only getting much more dramatic, much more quick. People are demanding insight much more quickly and decision intelligence to stay ahead competitively. So the ability to scale, the ability to obviously query data, to bring models of choice and leave data at rest is creating much faster outcomes and time to value of data, and we're thrilled to be working with partners with such proprietary and depth of data such as Cboe.

Rebecca Knight

>> So as you said, disruption really is the status quo here. What are the key ingredients that firms need in your mind? I know you work with some of the biggest financial services companies in the world, including Cboe. What needs to be true in order for them to get the most out of AI?

James McGeehan

>> Sure. So it starts with a data foundation and everyone has to start to modernize their technology, really to commercialize and in some cases even monetize it. So if you think about AI, it all starts with a great data foundation. So it's that foundational work to bring the best of breed of your data together, organize it to a unified data model, really then it's about activation of that data. So it's helping your team to understand what are the right questions to ask of it, to think of the outcome you're looking to get to, and then work backwards. And the foundational pieces that we see from our customers is really about, how do we do this, utilizing AI not just to come up with to use AI, but it's really to come up with a trusted, accurate outcome at low cost. It's about efficiency and productivity.

Dave Vellante

>> So you said before James, everything's changing, changing fast. It reminds me of something Jeff Bezos always says, he goes, "Everybody's always asking me what's changing. I like to think of what's not changing." So Ellen, what's not changing in your world? I presume you want to go faster, you mentioned low latency before. I assume you want to continuously be more cost-effective, but what are those sort of fundamental things that don't change that you need to continuously improve?

Ellen Taylor-Lubrano

>> I mean, something that doesn't change is just that we have to be accurate. We need data that is trusted, data that is verified. I would say maybe the precise nature of the regulatory landscape changes, but I guess the fundamental nature of regulation doesn't change and making sure that we're providing, I would say moving as quickly as we can while staying within that framework. Yeah, I guess just delivering a solid customer experience.

Dave Vellante

>> Well that's like music to your ears. The compliance piece is... You saw what happened... Well, I think Wells Fargo, I didn't see the whole story today, but I saw on TV, I think they finally got the holy water thrown on them. So that's the cost of non-compliance. I mean you see that, and it's just the business. I think the CEO said it probably estimated some huge number, like 40 billion dollars of missed opportunity or market cap, I don't know, it was huge but that's the cost of non-compliance.

James McGeehan

>> 100%. So I actually used to work at Wells Fargo during a time period when they were under that consent order in the asset cap, it absolutely impeded their ability to grow their business as markets were volatile, to provide liquidity to their clients and provide risk solutions. Not understanding your data, not having things in a compliant effective fashion even as the regulations continuously change is a real serious problem. And having that, as Ellen mentioned, the governance control and lineage and observability of that data is absolutely crucial, especially within the banking capital markets in the exchange industry. It's absolutely a paramount issue.

Rebecca Knight

>> So along, in that vein, and this one is really for both of you because beyond the technology, what kinds of mindset shifts or leadership decisions are necessary and sort of helping customers really embrace this successfully, but as you say, also within the constraints that are there for a reason and then the guardrails that are necessary, how are you seeing leadership teams approach this differently?

James McGeehan

>> Sure. I'm happy to start and then kick it over to Ellen. But candidly, where it starts I think is people starting to think about, how is it aligning to a business priority? Technology is no longer a cost center. These are the data assets that sit within your walls, and then what is the priority of the business to then unify that asset into an outcome commercially across your lines of business. And then aligning that to a technology strategy and a data and an AI strategy to get the outcomes that you're really looking for, it's prioritization first, foundational work on your data to make sure it's accessible, understandable, and trusted. And then bringing the right tools of choice for cost-effectiveness and efficiency, that's a great place to start, but it starts with focus and alignment to business priorities.

Dave Vellante

>> So you're in the data business, did you have something to follow up on that or no? Sorry.

Ellen Taylor-Lubrano

>> I was just going to add that I know at Cboe, I mean our technology has always been crucial to our business and being able to deliver to customers. And I think that we've always sought a balance with that, that the business priorities are deeply intertwined with the technical capabilities and I don't know, I think that's a little bit of a different flavor, especially with AI thrown into the mix now, but I think we're just ready to capitalize on that and do what we do.

Dave Vellante

>> And you're in the data business, you build data products. It's funny, when Zhamak Dehghani came out with a concept of Data Mesh, she said, "You need to think about data as product." I'm like, "Well, the financial services has always thought about data as product." But I see here that you put some data products into the Snowflake Marketplace. So I wonder if you could talk about that, how you're monetizing data, what the role of the Snowflake Marketplace is.

Ellen Taylor-Lubrano

>> Yes, we're super excited about Snowflake Marketplace. Cboe has long provided monetized data and provided it to customers historically in a file-based sharing. So in one sense we're just doing what we do, keeping up with the needs of customers as customers go into the cloud, customers adopt Snowflake, we need to meet them where they are. But even beyond that, Snowflake is opening up just new possibilities in terms of the granularity of data that we can share. I mean you can share that via a file-based system, but it's not really usable. And when it's shared via Snowflake Marketplace, it's there. It's ready to use, customers don't have to set anything up to connect, it's ready to use all with that built-in scalability that Snowflake provides.

Dave Vellante

>> So what data products are in there? You mentioned the VIX before. Many people are familiar with the volatility index, what's in there in the marketplace?

Ellen Taylor-Lubrano

>> So right now we have some of our index feed products available. So that's kind of, we do a variety of indices and so we have feeds available there. And I would say we're closely looking into some data sets coming up that I can't talk about in detail yet because we haven't gotten the green light.

Dave Vellante

>> And the idea being those will be in the Marketplace, I can consume them, I could imagine I could use my credits or how can I pay for them?

James McGeehan

>> So customers can obviously now with our program, marketplace consumption program where they can start to use the debit card of credits that they've consumed for their compute stack to do that to achieve and utilize these highly proprietary, very valuable data sets that folks like Cboe can provide. And if you really think about, every customer needs data access and integration and in financial services, the quest to seek and gain alpha both operationally but also from an investment perspective is a continuous quest, that has been part of our strategy to bring the best of breed providers like Cboe into that marketplace. To then have some of the world's largest asset owners, sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds and asset managers, the data hungry people that are really trying to create investment alpha, which then gets them out return, which then gets them greater assets under management and revenue streams is all predicated upon the high quality of data we can bring into that ecosystem which is easily accessible onto the platform, which then hopefully gives them that faster time to value to that alpha outcome that they're really looking for.

Dave Vellante

>> So the go to market is you're in the Snowflake Marketplace and that Snowflake Marketplace is within another marketplace, is it not? I mean it can go directly, correct me if I'm wrong, but you live in the AWS marketplace and other cloud service providers' marketplaces, correct?

James McGeehan

>> So we have over time, and I think when I used to work at AWS and they had a product on a platform called Data Exchange, which was their platform. So people could procure data there. We're trying to build the most robust ecosystem ourselves through our marketplace. People can share data publicly. A lot of sharing is done privately. So obviously we let our partners choose how they wish to either list that data, which also differentiates us because we want to let allow our partners such as Cboe to have commercial control how which they actually wish to list that data and how they wish to market that data to their customers through their own sales force or publicly listing it on our marketplace.

Dave Vellante

>> So this is an independent, this marketplace is independent from other cloud marketplaces, correct?

James McGeehan

>> So we are an interoperable cloud platform that works across three different cloud stacks to give our customers interoperability, but we do separate ourselves from AWS's marketplace. People can procure Snowflake through the AWS marketplace, but the data sets that we're talking about here is absolutely through Snowflake's marketplace to achieve the needs of our clients.

Dave Vellante

>> And Cboe could have chosen to go directly to some other markets and maybe you do that, what was attractive to the Snowflake marketplace to you?

Ellen Taylor-Lubrano

>> To answer your question, we do, we explore various channels in the cloud-based distribution, but of course with Snowflake marketplace, with us storing these huge data sets in Snowflake already, it would be silly not to explore that. I mean, the lift is relatively low to now take that and monetize it.

Dave Vellante

>> It's your approximate to you're there.

James McGeehan

>> And just to add upon that, what we're trying to do is bring this network effect around data, best to breed customers from the financial services ecosystem. Say in the banking industry we have 20 of the top 25 GSIBs, 65% of the top 100 banks, 10 of the top 15 sovereign wealth funds, bring those types of investors and those types of data-hungry consumers both from a risk and alpha-seeking perspective to the best data that's available, ease of integration to it, to then scale compute to come up with outcomes faster, it's really hopefully a win-win-win for all.

Rebecca Knight

>> A win-win-win, the future is great.

James McGeehan

>> There you go.

Rebecca Knight

>> That's a great note to end on. Thank you both so much, James and Ellen for a really interesting conversation.

James McGeehan

>> Appreciate your time.

Ellen Taylor-Lubrano

>> Thank you so much.

James McGeehan

>> Thanks Ellen.

Ellen Taylor-Lubrano

>> Thanks Jimmy.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm Rebecca Knight for Dave Vellante. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of the Snowflake Summit. You're watching, theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech news and analysis.