Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the PHLX is putting the finishing touches on its new Technology Centre in the Philadelphia Navy Yard, at which point it will become the third US-based exchange to house its IT and business continuity operations offsite (the others are the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ).

Frucher spoke with CIO about technology's role at the PHLX, his expectations of IT and how the exchange budgets for technology.

CIO: Considering that so much of the business revolves around IT, what are your top expectations for the department? Sandy Frucher: The future of our business is staying ahead of the technology curve. This is a business where volume continues to expand exponentially. Because of this, IT must guarantee that we have the capacity to go with this expanding traffic. Secondly, I want them to be strategic and be able to respond to [the other exchanges that are] our competition. The last objective I'm looking for is to have them integrate our options, equity and futures products technologically so we have things running on a common platform. We're working on a slogan that is something like, "One Technology, Three Markets". We need IT to support that.

With all of these projects under way, how do you build alignment with IT? IT can't ever go wanting. I need to make sure their part of the business is adequately funded. We made that mistake once before I arrived, and we're not going to make it again. Bill and his whole operation go through the same rigorous budget process as everybody else, but they generally get what they need because that's the heart of the business. The other thing is that we've put Bill in charge of operations. Once you determine that IT is the business, it's silly to separate it. We consider IT "the business", so it runs the business operation.

You mention the budget process. How do you decide whether to fund a new technology investment? We have to ensure the integrity of our markets. When we look at new technologies and competitive technologies, we need to make sure the systems do what we need them to do and that they're cost-effective. We ask ourselves: Does it make sense? Can we save money with it? Then we put it through business analysis and make determinations accordingly. Part of that cost-benefit analysis is the opportunity cost associated with how we deploy our IT manpower. It's not a question of straight dollars. It's a trade-off of one system versus another system, because we've learned that you can't do it all at once.

Is there anything that you wish you'd never funded? No. In a business, you have to be prepared to fail in order to succeed. There are many times that you're going to make investments where the investment itself doesn't pay off in a bottom-line kind of way but is a necessary interlude at a particular moment in time.