Wall Street bigwigs now have more to grouse about than bear markets and sign-wielding Occupiers. Gathering hype that finance might be the next industry Silicon Valley disrupts is making these bigwigs nervous, and they’re increasingly seeking cover in technological barricades. According to Adrian Cockcroft, technology fellow at Battery Ventures, financial firms like JPMorgan Chase & Co. are using technologies like DevOps, Chaos Monkey and cloud services in ways that seemed outlandish just a few years ago.

“There’s a big transformation going on,” he told Brian Gracely, cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during DevOps Enterprise Summit 2015. “And it’s being driven a lot by kind of an existential threat where they think if the Wall Street banks don’t do something, the Bay Area, the Silicon Valley startups, will go and do something and take them out.”

Startups such as San Francisco-based Square, Inc. have proven that there are inroads into finance if tech will seek them out, and Wall Street is working to waylay an ingress that could change the game.

March to public cloud picks up pace

Cockcroft stated that in addition to financial firms, companies all over the map are increasing their use of DevOps and, especially, public cloud services like Amazon Web Services. Whereas a year ago, the interest was in moving a few applications to the cloud, now, he said, customers are asking how many data centers they can close. The convenience, agility and expenditure reduction are making the move a no-brainer, he added.

“People are realizing that it’s pretty hard to come up with something you can build yourself that can compete now with a public vendor,” he stated.

Cockcroft also spoke about his involvement in Netflix, Inc.’s introduction and subsequent success and said the company provides a pattern for companies that want an improved customer engagement system.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the DevOps Enterprise Summit 2015.

Photo by SiliconANGLE