Roger Burkhardt, 45, takes over the position and also joins the board of directors.

Terry Garnett, the venture capitalist who engineered the spinoff of Ingres from CA Inc. last fall, remains CEO of the Redwood City, Calif. company. However, the company said that if all goes well and Burkhardt meets business targets, he will take over the top spot in a year or so.

"I actually turned down various CIO opportunities to come here and lead this team," Burkhardt said.

Burkhardt joined the NYSE Group Inc. in 2000 and led a worldwide team of 2,000 technologists. During his tenure, the stock exchange deployed its first automatic trade execution service, helped the exchange restart trading after the 9/11 attacks, and managed a sevenfold increase in trade volumes.

The former IBM executive also led the exchange's adoption of Linux and other open-source technologies. "When we needed to have something special done, the biggest obstacles with closed-source software were our lawyers," Burkhardt said. "What we could freely do with open-source products was very compelling." He declined to name specific products out of respect for the exchange's strict security policy.