Headline: K Watch: Arthur Whitney in London
Nearly 70 customers, prospects and long-time K supporters braved an unexpectedly icy London night to attend Kx Systems official European launch party in January. Arthur Whitney gave a short presentation highlighting the strengths of the technology he created and has been enhancing for the past 10 years. Then he opened the floor to questions.
For some in the crowd, Whitneys claims of speed and scalability for K-based products such as kdb and kdb/tick initially bordered on the unbelievable. Fortunately, the Kx CTOs confident and good-humoured responses to questions quickly built rapport between him and the audience, which was composed primarily of executives from London financial firms.
Kx executives, including Whitney and CEO Janet Lustgarten, were in London to meet with a number of new UK customers, including JPMorgan, and to talk with journalists about the companys increased commitment to European firms. Whitney and Lustgarten also wanted to express solidarity with their UK-based global sales and support partner, First Derivatives (FD). FD head of operations Michael ONeill and his staff had invited most of the customers and prospects to the reception. The day before, ONeill was at the FinExpo financial technology show in Canary Wharf, where he gave a software demonstration of a risk management system built on kdb.
Long-time K watchers and British APL Association members were also present among the crowd that took advantage of the opportunity to hear Whitney and stay for the reception. These included Stephen Taylor and Ray Cannon. In addition to greeting Whitney, they were able to catch up with Simon Garland, who recently joined Kx as SVP of Technical Support.
Kx has witnessed increasing acceptance of its technology, particularly during the past two years, and has achieved significant growth. Companies today have big data problems they cant solve, Whitney said. Then they find Kx. Theres a new generation of users getting into vectors.