Mike Manos, who has been behind AOL’s Nibiru micro data center project which involved building out data center services without using a physical building, is taking on a new challenge, this time as CTO at payment technology company First Data.

Manos documented announced his move in his blog Loosebolts, saying he believes the payments industry is “ready for a change”, offering new challenges specific to the financial services industry.

At AOL Manos was part of a “Turn-Around” team, designed to rethink how it provisioned infrastructure and offered services around the Cloud.

Manos said working for first data, he will be looking closely at how transactions are carried out.

“From a transactional scale perspective its very similar to what I have been used to companies likes AOL, Microsoft, and Disney.  The difference being of course that these transactions are a little more important than checking your favorite sports scores, or getting your e-mail,” Manos said.

He will be looking to drive new levels of automation using elements of the software-defined data center and build a platform “that makes infrastructure a decisive and differentiating platform to launch products and services”.

“To create a learning infrastructure and software eco-system that gets smarter over time.  In large part how do you blend the agility of the Internet with the maturity and complexity of the financial services industry,” Manos said.

“In many respects dealing with Safe Harbor, Regulatory and tax has been part of my job for many years.  The challenge now is to take that automation to the next level.”

Manos’ move to first data follows the company’s announcement of a new chairman, CEO Frank Bisignano who is taking over from acting chairman Joe Forehand. Bisgnano said he focus will be on delivering innovative solutions for the industry, and to increase operating efficiencies.

At AOL Manos worked as SVP, a role that required all of his 18 years’ experience in the data center industry, where he has taken on roles covering network architecture, IT platforms, telco technologies, service management and data center management.

Before AOL he led the engineering and development teams at Huffington Post and Digital Realty Trust.