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CME Group, the world's largest and most diverse derivatives marketplace, today announced that it has been named the number one technology innovator for this year's InformationWeek 500, the annual ranking of the most innovative users of business technology in the nation. The 2009 InformationWeek 500 companies were revealed today at an awards ceremony held at the St. Regis Monarch Beach, California. This is the sixth consecutive year the exchange has been named to this prestigious list of technology innovators, and the first time it has ranked as number one.
"Technology plays a crucial role in our global business initiatives with electronic trading representing more than 80 percent of our volume," said CME Group Chief Executive Officer Craig Donohue. "We have customers in more than 85 countries who access our markets around the clock, so we pride ourselves on having the most reliable technology platform offering the broadest range of functionality. While we will continue to strive to provide the most flexible architecture in terms of bringing new technology, innovations, and solutions to the market, this award could not have been accomplished without the hard work and dedication of CME Group's employees."
"Our ongoing commitment to customer service shows through our technology and innovation developments," said CME Group Chief Information Officer Kevin Kometer. "We process millions of financial transactions per day from around the world. In order to meet the heavy demands placed on our systems, we have rigorous requirements that must be met across the performance, scalability, reliability, ease of use, and costs of our IT infrastructure. I'm proud of my entire team that we are recognized as a market leader in terms of using technology to become faster, more robust, and to improve our functionality."
The CME Globex electronic trading platform offers vast capabilities to facilitate the most complex and demanding trading. Our deep and liquid electronic marketplace enables customers to choose from the widest range of benchmark products across all asset classes, futures and options based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural commodities, metals, and alternative investment products such as weather and real estate. Through August 2009, nearly 80 percent of all contracts traded at CME Group have been executed via electronic trading and average daily volume for the year is 8.3 million contracts. On average, trades on CME Globex are executed in less than 7 milliseconds, with some of CME Group's markets already trading at 2.5 milliseconds.
"For over 20 years, the InformationWeek 500 has honored the most innovative users of business technology," said InformationWeek Editor-in-Chief Rob Preston. "Year after year, InformationWeek 500 companies harness technology to improve efficiency, boost productivity, drive revenue, and establish a competitive advantage. We applaud this year's winners, and the CIOs and other executives whose ingenuity and risk taking are at the center of business technology innovation."
InformationWeek identifies and honors the nation's most innovative users of information technology with its annual 500 listing, now in its 21st year, and also tracks the technology, strategies, investments and administrative practices of America's best-known companies. Top winners have included: Conway, National Semiconductor, Kimberly-Clark, Hilton Hotels and Unum. The InformationWeek 500 rankings are unique among corporate rankings as it spotlights the power of innovation in information technology, rather than simply identifying the biggest IT spenders.
Additional details on the InformationWeek 500 can be found online at www.informationweek.com/iw500/. For a complete fact sheet on CME Globex, click here.
To view a video of CME Group's CEO Craig Donohue and CIO Kevin Kometer, visit: http://powerhost.powerstream.net/008/00102/090908infoweek2_4.wmv
