Goldman Sachs, with 10,000 tech workers, embraces open computing

A surprising thing about Goldman Sachs, one of the globe's most influential investment banks, may be the sheer size of its technology organization. It makes up a major part of its workforce.

Another big surprise from the firm, a major player in one of the most risk adverse industries, may be its philosophy that embraces commodity approaches, open systems and platforms, and ultimately perhaps, the public cloud.

Goldman Sachs has 36,000 employees. About 10,000 of those -- more than 25% of the workforce -- work, effectively, in technology. Of those tech tech workers, about 6,000 are developers, and the bulk of the remainder work as quantitative strategists on the business side, though they are fundamentally technologists or engineers, according to Donald Duet, global co-chief operating officer of the Goldman Sachs technology division.