G00272284

Magic Quadrant for Trading Platforms

Published: 22 December 2014

Analyst(s): David Furlonger, Fabio Chesini

Changes in market structures, such as utility-originated pricing, as well as

ongoing regulatory pressures, are putting pressure on institutions to
rationalize their application portfolios. Market growth for trading platforms
will switch to emerging markets and midtier institutions.

Market Definition/Description
Gartner defines a trading platform as a computer system designed to perform financial market
analysis, capture and process daily treasury transactions, evaluate the risks associated with those
transactions, provide settlement and reporting functionality, and post transaction records to
accounts and other financial records repositories. Trading platforms directly or indirectly facilitate
the placement of orders for financial products with another financial entity or intermediary, over a
network. These financial offerings include products and asset classes such as equities, bonds/fixed
income instruments, foreign exchange, money market/cash instruments, commodities and
derivatives. The financial entities involved in the transactions include brokers, market makers/
principals, investment banks, universal banks, hedge funds and asset managers. Trading platforms
facilitate electronic/digital transactions that may be undertaken by trading firms from any location
using available computer networking infrastructure.
Trading platforms stream, or integrate with, live market price feeds on which traders can base
decisions, and they integrate with additional trading tools, such as charting packages, news feeds
and account management and reporting functions. A trading platform will also, depending on its
scope, either combine aspects of middle- and back-office capabilities for risk management,
accounting and settlement/payments, or offer links to synergistic platforms that perform these
functions.
The definition of a trading platform has not shifted dramatically through the years, but a number of
leading vendors are currently making progress on the migration path toward service-oriented
architecture (SOA)-compliant, component-based, multi-asset-class systems, as well as toward
more open app-based capabilities.

Magic Quadrant
Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for Trading Platforms

Source: Gartner (December 2014)

Vendor Strengths and Cautions

Advent Software
Advent, founded in 1983, is a public company headquartered in San Francisco, California, with
revenue of more than $400 million. Advent employs 1,179 people supporting over 800 customer
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deployments (for Moxy, Advent's trade order management system [OMS]), approximately 100 of
which are outside the United States.
Advent develops and provides software products and services for managing the trading and
investing of financial products. Its SaaS-based product offerings encompass Advent OnDemand,
which includes its product offerings delivered over the Web and hosted either by Advent or by a
third party, and Black Diamond, which is available only over the Web and hosted by Advent. It
primarily concentrates its offerings (Moxy, Advent Portfolio Exchange [APX], Axys, Geneva, Black
Diamond, Advent Custodial Data and other solutions for process automation) on asset managers,
wealth managers, registered investment advisors, prime brokers, fund administrators, hedge funds,
family offices, broker-dealers, foundations, pension funds, endowments and funds of funds.
Moxy was first launched over 10 years ago and has had 10 major version changes since inception.
It is written in C++, C# and .NET. The current version is v.4.2 released in October 2014.
Strengths

Major market presence with institutional fund managers now enhanced via Advent Direct
Community a social environment for product and service development

Significant hosting capabilities and market connectivity partnerships, for example, with
SunGard, Omgeo and the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC)

A comprehensive business rule engine allows for workflow automation, and rules can now be
freely exported/imported between the trading platform and user systems; although there is no
prepopulated rules library, Advent supplies templates for complex rule generation

Moxy has an open database with multiple integration points, and Advent is also investing in its
new platform, Advent Direct, to ensure its clients will be able to gain value from social, mobile
and cloud developments in the future

Cautions

Until very recently, there was no "on the ground" market presence in the Asia/Pacific region

Limited penetration of the sell-side institutional market

Some functionality gaps in areas such as derivatives and asset and liability management; there
is no trader UI for derivatives, and it is not a core development focus

System architecture has been based on big block functional modules, and there is limited
componentization and a closed service library

Asseco Poland
Asseco Poland, founded in 1989, is a joint-stock technology company based in Rzeszow, Poland. It
is part of Asseco Group, a federation of companies with an employee base of 3,163 that design and

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implement technology solutions globally. The banking division focuses on clients in Central and
Eastern Europe, with a broad core banking, treasury and trading offering.
Asseco's banking group serves more than 17 customers in the universal banking market, primarily
in Poland.
The company's def3000/TR product originated in its current form in 2001, and has had 52 major
version changes since inception. It is written in Delphi, and the current version, 2.51.0, was released
in April 2013.
Strengths

Large Asseco Group implementation and sales support from corporate parent

Willing to work with customers for customized development, with custom-made development
costs included in maintenance agreements

Local knowledge of Eastern European market

Local resources with solid implementation expertise

Cautions

No road map for open banking

Eastern European-centric platform deployments

No SaaS or application service provider (ASP) implementations

Limited core trading functionality, especially in terms of liquidity and risk management

Bloomberg
Bloomberg, founded in 1982, is in the top 50 of America's largest private companies, with revenue
of more than $8 billion. Bloomberg employs over 15,500 people in 192 global locations.
Bloomberg is a global financial information and technology company, providing business and
financial data, analytics, and news to financial and corporate customers over desktop and
enterprise-level platforms. It also offers data, analysis and technology tools, for the government,
law, energy and sports industries; and provides brokerage services. Bloomberg's news organization
publishes books, broadcast products, magazines, and manages digital properties.
Bloomberg's Trading Solutions include Asset and Investment Manager (AIM), Trade Order
Management Solution (TOMS) and Sell-Side Execution & Order Management Solutions (SSEOMS),
which serve buy- and sell-side customers worldwide. These solutions leverage the common
architecture, data, analytics and calculation capability of the Bloomberg Professional service;
specific programming languages, current versions and release dates are kept confidential by
Bloomberg.

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Strengths

Bloomberg corporate financial resources and backing

Global distribution network and support as well as integration capabilities to the broader realtime news and data platforms

Multicountry, institution-type coverage that also integrates with other trading/matching/

settlement platforms (for example, for foreign exchange [FX])

Continued focus on open architecture via open Workflow Extensions and the Trading Solutions
Application Development Framework

Launched the App Portal in 2012, and has grown participation for hosting third-party-developed
pricing, risk and portfolio management tools and analytics

Cautions

Limited liquidity management functionality, and some gaps in risk management functionality
(research and development is underway to deliver an enterprisewide risk module mainly for
market and credit risk management)

No collateral management capability, and some gaps in derivative instrument coverage

Limited breadth of back-office capabilities; However, Bloomberg AIM offers buy-side

institutions and hedge funds a suite of front-, middle- and back-office modules that help
achieve straight-through processing, reconcile position and transaction data from multiple
sources, measure performance, automate to-be-announced mortgage processing and
customize data aggregation/reporting

Bloomberg TOMS and SSEOMS integrate with third-party providers to provide sell-side
customers capabilities for onboarding, order aggregation and posttrade processing

Calypso
Calypso, founded in 1997, is a private company headquartered in San Francisco, California, with
revenue of approximately $200 million. Calypso employs 700 people supporting 190 customer
deployments in all major geographic regions.
Calypso developed an integrated trading platform used to trade bonds, currencies, derivatives,
stocks and other financial instruments. It also provides related services, such as consulting,
implementation, support and training. Core customers are global financial services firms across the
buy and sell sides of the industry, as well as hedge funds and stock exchanges.
Calypso, the product, was first launched in 2000 and has had 14 major version changes since
inception. It is written in Java. The current version is v.14, released in October 2013.

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Strengths

Global market presence, with cross-institutional coverage and comprehensive functional,

instrument and asset-class capabilities

Organic growth plans, now enhanced via the extension of its existing partnership with SAP by
joining SAP PartnerEdge program for application development and product commercialization,
and it is continuing to add additional partners to its development and implementation
ecosystem

Heavy architectural focus on market integration and connectivity across pre- and posttrade
environments, with associated development for all aspects of the trade life cycle

Focus on lowering customer total cost of ownership (TCO) via Calypso's bank-in-a-box and
third-party cloud enablement, as well as a preconfigured, midtier/small institution trading
platform solution

Cautions

Reducing third-party developer API breadth down to a core focus on analytics APIs used in
market making

No immediate plans for app store development, apps or widgets, at least until the completion of
internal impact analysis

Limited mobile capabilities, including exception management and operations failure alerting
features (additional functionality is in development)

Process-focused UI with detailed alpha/numeric components, look and feel

Charles River
Charles River, founded in 1984, is a private technology company based in Burlington,
Massachusetts, with revenue of around $270 million. Charles River offers a front- and middle-office
technology solution for buy-side firms that supports the entire investment management life cycle
from decision support activities through compliance, trading and posttrade settlement for any asset
class on a single platform. The solution also supports private cloud-based services, including
application management, hosting, data management, Financial Information eXchange (FIX)
connectivity and compliance advisory.
Charles River serves 360 customers in the universal banking, hedge fund and institutional asset
management market segments (as well as insurers and wealth managers). It serves clients in all
major global regions with an employee base of 617.
The Charles River Investment Management Solution originated in its current form in July 1997, and
has had 10 major version changes since inception. It is written in Java and C#, and the current
version, 9.2.1, was released in April 2014.

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Strengths

Deep operational stack that covers core trading functionality embedded within a managed
service environment (including application hosting, training, risk/compliance management, data
integration and FIX connectivity)

Leading provider of pre- and in-trade compliance management capabilities

Managed hub provides messaging and communications capabilities between asset managers
and sponsors in the wealth management industry segment

Web services architecture offers around 700 services for "plug and play" integration, as well as
an open API to allow for client-instigated development

Cautions

Partnerships are focused on functional and integration enhancements with other application
providers; limited system integrator (SI) involvement, except in developing nations via local SI

No investment/central bank or broker-dealer penetration, focus is on the buy side

No planned open banking or app store development focus

Infosys
Infosys, founded in 1981, with annual revenue of $8.24 billion (over $2.2 billion of which came from
banking and financial services in the Indian fiscal year 2014), is a global provider of business
consulting, software and outsourcing services across a wide range of industries.
A publicly traded company headquartered in Bangalore, India, Infosys serves more than 890
customers in more than 30 countries with an employee base of more than 160,000 (nearly 300 of
whom are dedicated to the Infosys Finacle Treasury product line).
Finacle Treasury originated in its current form in 1996, and has had five version changes since
inception. It is written in C++ and .NET. The current version is 11, released in April 2014.
Strengths

Broad financial functional coverage overlapping retail core banking, treasury and trading

Financial strength, size, support and deployment capabilities using significant native
professional services resources

SOA with a capacity for componentization of specific trading functions, (for example, limit
checking)

APIs can be delivered to a proprietary Infosys user group app store that allows for the creation
of banking client apps

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Cautions

No North American market penetration geographic focus is largely in the Middle East and
parts of Asia/Pacific

Some functional omissions, for example, in asset liability management (ALM) where it uses
partner solutions

Multiple screens/menus for different functional representations, that is, no integrated, singleview trader dashboard

No chat or advanced graphic capabilities

Linedata
Linedata, founded in 1998, is a public company providing software and processing solutions for the
investment and credit markets.
Linedata serves 700 clients operating in 50 countries supported by 900 employees. Within the
investment management space, Linedata has comprehensive solutions for the institutional
investment management market, the wealth management market and the alternative investment
management market.
Its core offerings involve front-to-back-office solutions for the industry buy side, helping to manage
the pretrade through settlement and reporting processes. Key client bases include mutual and
institutional fund managers and administrators, as well as hedge funds and prime brokers. It has
more than 10 years' capability in delivering products via ASP and more recently SaaS platforms.
In the front- and middle-office space, over 100 clients use the Linedata Longview and Linedata
Compliance products across North America and the 28 EU markets. These clients are supported by
an employee base of 195, dedicated solely to the Linedata Longview family of products.
Linedata Longview provides enhanced portfolio management tools and workflows, expanded
execution management tools, risk measurement and analytics, streamlined allocation tools,
advanced compliance monitoring, integrated portfolio analytics with performance measurement,
and flexible reporting.
Linedata Longview originated in its current form in 1982, and has had six major version changes
since inception. It is written in Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) .NET. The current
version is 7.4, released in May 2014.
Strengths

Comprehensive trading instrument and trade management functionality with real-time-trade lifecycle-tracking capabilities

Customizable widgets can be uploaded on to the platform, developed either by customers or

Linedata

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Active community user groups for product development

Broader corporate support and financial resources that is, beyond the Linedata Longview
offering

Cautions

Embarked upon a major platform rewrite to enable a next-generation platform due in 2016
(which will include mobile capabilities and be totally app-based)

No asset and liability management or liquidity management coverage in the Linedata Longview
application, but both are offered in a fully integrated additional Linedata product, Linedata
Global Hedge

Risk management functionality delivered via partnership with MSCI RiskMetrics and StatPro
Revolution

Misys
Misys, founded in 1979, with an annual revenue approaching $1 billion, is a global provider of
software and services to the banking, insurance, securities and other financial services markets. Its
offerings include brokerage systems and outsourcing services for e-commerce and transaction
processing. Application software coverage includes risk management, retail and wholesale banking,
treasury and capital markets, and transaction banking.
A private company (with private equity backing) headquartered in London, U.K., Misys serves 2,000
customers across all the major geographic regions, with an employee base of more than 4,600.
FusionCapital and FusionInvest are branded solution wrappers for the previously acquired trading
platforms: Sophis, Kondor+, Summit and Opics. FusionCapital originated in its current form in June
2013, and FusionInvest in May 2013. FusionCapital is still on its release version, 1.2, and
FusionInvest has had two version changes since inception and is now version 7.1.3 (since August
2013). They are both written in Java.
Strengths

Long history of providing multiple solutions to all aspects of the financial services industry

Global market presence, with a historically strong presence in Europe

Progressing development of a componentized architecture, cloud-enabled with computational

elasticity leveraging graphics processing unit (GPU) acceleration, and FusionFabric Connect for
standard API integration

Development of HTML5 browser-based architecture to support mobile/tablet deployments

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Cautions

Individual system road maps maintained for each solution under the Fusion wrapper;
standardized components/library development is a work in progress, with additional
functionality to be released in 2015

No current app store development, although third-party development can be done by

consultants and customers to customize aspects of the underlying applications leveraging the
FusionFabric technology

Limited SaaS deployments

Murex
Murex, founded in 1986 with an annual revenue approaching $500 million, is a global provider of
trading, risk management and processing software solutions for banks, asset managers,
corporations and utilities.
A private company, headquartered in Paris, France, Murex serves 270 customers across all the
major geographic regions with an employee base of more than 1,700.
Its MX.3 platform originated in its current form in 2005, and has had 24 version changes since
inception. It is written in Java and C++. The current version is MX.3.1.33, released in November
2014.
Strengths

Deep multi-asset-class functional coverage incorporating enterprise integration and display at

front office, collateral and risk management, and operation levels

Significant risk management capabilities, especially in the context of real-time pricing for preand posttrade regulatory compliance and business risk management, as well as front-to-backoffice risk calculation consistency

SOA with a capacity for componentization of specific trading functions, for example, calculation
server with multitiered transaction scaling and rapid deployment model via MXpress for
packaging and implementation and MXplus for upgrades

Role-centric interface provision that is also enabled for distribution to mobile devices

Cautions

Some functional deficiencies in ALM

App store, chat and advanced graphic capabilities are works in progress

Market concentration is on investment banks, as opposed to asset managers, universal banks

and others

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Geographic client concentration in Europe; this concentration has been declining as Murex
continues to grow penetration into markets with client deployments in every geographic region

OpenLink
OpenLink, founded in 1992, is a private company (owned by private equity firm Hellman &
Friedman) with revenue of more than $320 million. OpenLink employs over 1,100 people supporting
347 customer deployments (for the Endur and Findur products) in North and Latin America, as well
as the EU.
OpenLink develops risk management, trading, portfolio management and operation processing
software. It offers front- through back-office applications for banks, corporate treasury
departments, insurance companies, asset managers, brokers, commodity traders, energy
marketers, utilities, and exploration and production companies. OpenLink also provides
professional services (consulting, maintenance, support and training), as well as complementary
niche products through subsidiaries such as dbcSMARTsoftware (software for agricultural
commodities) and IRM (energy trade processing software).
Findur was first launched in 1992 and has had 13 major version changes since inception. It is
written in C/C++, .NET and Java. The current version is v.14, released in August 2014.
Strengths

Strong, native professional services capability serving multiple geographic regions and financial
institution types

A platform architecture capable of scaling to very large international deployments, and also
providing extensive integration capabilities; with a distributed data grid capability for scaling inmemory data caching that can be separately licensed to enable real-time data aggregation and
reporting

Comprehensive multi-instrument/asset-class functional coverage with deep capabilities in

collateral and liquidity, as well as risk management (which can be delivered as SaaS
components)

Solid open-format user group involvement in product development clients can extend and
customize the solution using OpenComponents, and customizations are ported across version
upgrades to maintain lower TCO

Cautions

OpenLink is best-known for its energy trading and risk management (ETRM) market offering,
Endur; in financial services, the Findur brand is not well-recognized, regardless of its existing
client footprint

No plans for app store development, or app-/widget-based capabilities

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The extent of the system capabilities may require all clients to undertake additional training and
education, especially in areas of trade and risk management

Overengineering of product's capabilities by OpenLink's clients in the past has impacted

implementation time scales for Findur OpenLink's use of Agile methodologies, and increased
use of market best-practice packaged solutions can mitigate these challenges

SunGard
SunGard, founded in 1982 with annual revenue of about $2.8 billion ($2.55 billion of which came
from the SunGard Financial Systems, SunGard's financial services division, in 2013), is a global
provider of software and processing solutions for financial services, higher education and the public
sector. SunGard Financial Systems provides mission-critical software and IT services to institutions
in virtually every segment of the financial services industry. The primary purpose of these systems is
to automate the many detailed processes associated with trading, managing investment portfolios
and accounting for investment assets. These solutions address the processing requirements of a
broad range of users within financial services, including asset managers, traders, custodians,
compliance officers, treasurers, insurers, risk managers, hedge fund managers, plan administrators
and clearing agents. In addition, SunGard provides professional services that focus on application
implementation and integration of these solutions, and on custom software development.
SunGard serves approximately 16,000 customers in more than 70 countries and has more than
13,000 employees. It has grown traditionally via acquisition, completing more than 150 acquisitions
in the past 20 years. Formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), on 11 August 2005
the company was acquired by a consortium of seven private equity investment firms in a
transaction valued at $11.3 billion. The partners in the acquisition were Silver Lake Partners, Bain
Capital, Blackstone Group, Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Providence
Equity Partners and TPG Capital.
SunGard's Front Arena solution originated in its current form in 1998 and has had 40 version
changes since inception. Front Arena offers a single platform to manage both listed and over the
counter (OTC)-traded instruments. More than 270 buy- and sell-side institutions harness Front
Arena to manage their trading workflows. It is written in C++, Python, .NET, Microsoft SQL Server
(MSSQL) and Sybase. The current version is 2014.3 released in June 2014
Strengths

Comprehensive asset-class coverage

Financial strength, size and global presence, support and deployment capabilities using native
resources

Multimodular with configurability for institutional type (for example, market maker, broker,
hedge fund)

Proprietary APIs allow for extensibility of functionality, as well as import/export of data and
multideployment capability, for example, in-house license, SaaS, ASP

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Cautions

Third-party developers have to be SunGard-certified to access API and code stores, and
documentation for development

No app store for trading widgets

Multiple GUI versions for different modules

Chat and advanced graphic capabilities are in separate modules

SuperDerivatives
SuperDerivatives was founded in 2001. Headquartered in New York (with additional offices in
Europe, the Middle East and Pacific Rim), with annual revenue of roughly $100 million and over 300
employees, it provides cloud-based derivatives data, trading technology, and valuation services for
financial and commodity markets worldwide. The company specifically focuses on derivatives
solutions, which include SDX, a real-time cross-asset front-office system; SDeX, a multibankdealing platform for over-the-counter options; RMX, a cross-asset market risk and position
management system; DataX, which provides real-time mark-to-market volatility surfaces and curves
across various asset classes; CorporeX, a cross-asset risk and compliance system for corporations;
eValueX, a cross-asset and independent portfolio valuation service; and Market Data, a real-time
market data management service that provides independent data and analysis.
Its customers include banks, hedge funds, asset managers, corporations, insurance companies,
custodians and hedge fund administrators.
SDX originated in its current form in 2001 and has had 10 version changes since inception. It is
written in C and Java. There are no specific version numbers because it is exclusively a SaaS
deployment. The latest release was July 2014.
Strengths

Comprehensive derivatives trading package with modern GUI and seamless integration of chat
and multigraphic capabilities

Global deployment via SaaS platform

Open API and app store that houses trading widgets that can be built by customers, third-party
developers and/or SuperDerivatives

Real-time market data provision sourced from multiple financial intermediaries

Cautions

Covers only derivatives some functional gaps in components such as collateral/liquidity/

asset and liability management

Acquisition by Intercontinental Exchange was announced during the process of evaluation

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No native professional services capabilities although this is less important from an integration
standpoint due to the SaaS delivery model

Only one licensing model in a market that still can struggle with the concept of non-in-house
deployments

Tata Consultancy Services

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), founded in 1968, is a public limited company based in Mumbai,
India. TCS is an IT services, consulting and business solution provider implementing technology
solutions globally. The TCS Financial Solutions strategic business unit offers an integrated range of
products for the financial services industry, including core banking, treasury and trading. TCS group
revenue exceeds $13.4 billion.
TCS's trading platform is implemented with 46 customers, mainly in the universal and investment
banking and broker-dealer market, with a geographic presence largely concentrated in Asia/Pacific.
TCS Financial Solutions has an employee base of over 5,000.
TCS BaNCS trading platform originated in its current form in 1999, and has had eight major version
changes since inception. It is written in Java/Java EE, and the current version, 6.1, was released in
June 2014.
Strengths

Significant global professional services capacity and capability

Broad trading functional coverage

Component-based architectural design and configurability

Integrated accounting and back-office processing capability

Cautions

Limited collateral management functionality

The Service Integrator solution enables component configurability, but the evolution of open
banking is in road map form

Geographic penetration limited to near-India markets; limited European client base (although
with large financial institutions); deployments in North America based on foreign branches as
part of multicountry rollouts

TwoFour
TwoFour, founded in 2002, is a private technology company based in White Plains, New York.
TwoFour is a provider of technology solutions for treasury and capital markets, focusing on FX,
cash management, limits and order management.

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TwoFour serves 41 customers in the investment banking, broker-dealer and institutional asset
management market segments in three main regions North America, Asia/Pacific and the EU
with an employee base of 125.
TwoFour (the product) originated in its current form in July 2004, and has had five major version
changes since inception. It is written in C#, and the current version 6.x was released in May 2014.
Strengths

Agile development capabilities and focus on HTML5 for mobile deployment

Cross-market segment coverage

Customer-advised custom-made development drives R&D from a dedicated professional

services team

Preconfigured solution eases deployment times and promotes standardization of workflows,

interfaces and more

Cautions

No SaaS offering and limited ASP

Limited external partnership arrangements and no external integrator relationships

Core functional coverage focused on FX and cash

Limited derivatives and risk management functionality

Vendors Added and Dropped

We review and adjust our inclusion criteria for Magic Quadrants and MarketScopes as markets
change. As a result of these adjustments, the mix of vendors in any Magic Quadrant or
MarketScope may change over time. A vendor's appearance in a Magic Quadrant or MarketScope
one year and not the next does not necessarily indicate that we have changed our opinion of that
vendor. It may be a reflection of a change in the market and, therefore, changed evaluation criteria,
or of a change of focus by that vendor.

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

The evaluation process for this Magic Quadrant began with 56 trading platform product candidates,
which resulted in a qualified group of 14 vendor/product offerings in the trading platform market.
This final group submitted information on subjects ranging from long-term strategies to product
road maps. Gartner also requested feedback from vendor-identified reference institutions that
encompassed different/related vendor/product offerings from the participants, and took into
account information collected during the normal course of inquiries with financial industry clients.
This process assisted in determining the placement of group finalists on the Magic Quadrant.

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Changes From the Related 2012 Treasury and Trading Magic Quadrant
The vendor qualifications for inclusion in this year's Magic Quadrant were adjusted to reflect
broader inclusion across buy- and sell-side markets, and an increase in the number of total
vendors.

Inclusion Criteria
This Magic Quadrant evaluates suppliers only on their trading capabilities. The criteria for inclusion
in this Magic Quadrant are based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative measures. Those
vendors that are included must:

Have software products developed and owned by the vendor that are intended solely for the
purpose of trading operations, including executing, managing and processing the trading of
securities market products

Have at least 20 unique, named, paying financial institutions using their trading solutions

Be able to provide evidence of corporate funding, sales, revenue, employee and additional
resources and operational investments that support market objectives for trading solutions
(including financial details indicating at least $30 million in annual revenue)

Be able to demonstrate at least three years of live implementations, from at least four specified
countries, which are still in use as of August 2014

Be commercially viable and not in the process of filing for bankruptcy, or have its product
offering subject to imminent acquisition or discontinuation

Be able to provide at least 10 customer references (including those supported by third-party

distribution/SI partners) available for Gartner to contact, with contact information supplied at
time of submission

Trading Platform Product Capabilities

An included vendor needs to support:

More than one asset class, and multiple instrument types (for example, equities, fixed income,
commodities, money market, FX or derivatives) and multiple associated instrument types

Trader decision support tools and market/trade analytics

Middle-office risk management analysis and reporting, as well as basic back-office processing

Physical or financial position management, trade processing and reporting

Capabilities to address asset and liability management, liquidity management, aspects of

market and credit risk management, and collateral management

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Exclusion Criteria
Some trading platform vendors that were invited to participate in the initial Magic Quadrant
screening process were not selected due to insufficient product market qualifications. The reasons
included the following:

Some vendors and products did not meet the specifics of the inclusion criteria.

Some vendors' predominant functional focus is on decision support/analytics, pricing, workflow

management or accounting.

Vendors that are predominantly "professional-services-based" or have "consulting-led"

offerings (that is, whose products are not based on a particular software-oriented license) are
not included. We recognize, however, that IT and business services are an important element of
trading platforms, and encourage software vendors to note their professional services
competencies and partnerships.

Value-added resellers and product distributors were excluded.

The following vendors or products did not provide sufficient evidence for the minimum criteria,
because they failed to respond adequately to meet the purposes of this evaluation, because
publicly sourced data was insufficient to form a valid evaluation of their capabilities, or because
initial assessment excluded them from evaluation:

Almis International: The Almis System

Azisoft: Elite

Dion Global Solutions: dfferentia

ERI Bancaire: Olympic Banking System

Eurobase International Group: Siena

Eze Software Group: Eze OMS

Ferential Systems: Pyramid

Fidessa: Fidessa trading platform

First Derivatives: Delta suite

FlexTrade Systems: FlexTRADER

Imagine Software: Imagine Trading System

InfrasoftTech: OMNIEnterprise

Ion Trading: including Wall Street Systems and various related products

3i Infotech: Tradis

IT2 Treasury Solutions: IT2

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List Group: FastTrade

CGI: Twin

Numerix: Numerix CrossAsset

Oracle: Oracle Flexcube

Orc: Orc Trader

pdv Financial Software: Decide/EQ

Portware: Portware Enterprise

Savvysoft: OmniPricer

SS&C Technologies: Tradeware GlobalX

Temenos: Temenos T24

Torstone Technology: Inferno

Thomson Reuters: Thomson Reuters Dealing

(Gartner's financial institution clients are advised to use their client inquiry privileges with the
authors of this research for more information concerning this list and the inclusion/exclusion
criteria.)

Evaluation Criteria
Ability to Execute
Gartner analysts evaluate technology providers on the quality and efficacy of the processes,
systems, methods or procedures that enable IT provider performance to be competitive, efficient
and effective, and to positively impact revenue, retention and reputation. Ultimately, technology
providers are judged on their ability and success in capitalizing on their vision in the following areas:

Product/Service: A heavily weighted element of a vendor's Ability to Execute, considering core

goods and services that compete in or serve the trading platform market, including current
product/service capabilities, quality, feature sets and skills.

Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial, Strategy and Organization): Including an

assessment of the overall organization's financial health, the financial and practical success of
the business, and the likelihood of the individual business unit to continue to invest in trading
platforms.

Sales Execution/Pricing: The technology provider's capabilities in all presales activities and
the structure that support them, including deal management, pricing and negotiation, presales
support and the overall effectiveness of the sales channel.

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Market Responsiveness and Track Record: The ability to respond, change direction, be
flexible and achieve competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act, customers'
needs evolve and market dynamics change. This criterion also considers the provider's history
of responsiveness.

Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of programs designed to
deliver the organization's trading platform message in order to influence the market, promote
the brand and business, increase awareness of associated products and establish a positive
identification with the product/brand and organization in the minds of buyers. This "mind share"
can be driven by a combination of publicity, promotions, thought leadership, word of mouth and
sales activities.

Customer Experience: The relationships, products and services/programs that enable clients
to be successful with the products evaluated. Specifically, this category includes the ways
customers receive technical support or account support. It may also include ancillary tools,
customer support programs (and their quality), the availability of user groups, and service-level
agreements (SLAs).

Operations: This is the ability of the organization to meet its goals and commitments. Factors
include the quality of the organizational structure, including skills, experiences, programs,
systems and other vehicles that enable the organization to operate effectively and efficiently on
an ongoing basis.

Table 1. Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria

Evaluation Criteria

Weighting

Product or Service

High

Overall Viability

Medium

Sales Execution/Pricing

Medium

Market Responsiveness/Record

High

Marketing Execution

Low

Customer Experience

High

Operations

High

Source: Gartner (December 2014)

Completeness of Vision
Gartner analysts evaluate technology providers based on their ability to convincingly articulate
logical statements about current and future market direction, innovation, customer needs and
competitive forces, and how well they map to Gartner positions. Ultimately, technology providers

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are rated on their understanding of how market forces can be exploited to create opportunity for the
provider in the following areas:

Market Understanding: The ability to understand buyers' needs and translate these needs into
products and services. Vendors that show the highest degree of vision listen to and understand
buyers' wants and needs, and can shape or enhance those wants and needs.

Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of messages about trading platforms,

consistently communicated throughout the organization and externalized through the provider's
website, advertising, customer programs and positioning statements.

Sales Strategy: A strategy for selling trading platform software that uses the appropriate
network of direct and indirect sales, marketing, service and communication affiliates to extend
market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and the customer base.

Offering (Product) Strategy: A technology provider's approach to trading platform software

product development and delivery that emphasizes differentiation, functionality, methodology,
and feature set as they map to current and future requirements.

Business Model: The soundness and logic of a technology provider's underlying business
proposition.

Vertical/Industry Strategy: The technology provider's strategy for directing resources, skills,
and offerings to meet the specific needs of treasury and trading operations in the financial
services industry.

Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and synergistic allocation of resources, expertise or

capital for investment, consolidation, defensive or preemptive purposes.

Geographic Strategy: The technology provider's strategy to direct resources, skills and
offerings to meet the specific needs of geographies outside its "home" or native geography,
either directly or through partners, channels and subsidiaries, as appropriate for that geography
and market.

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Table 2. Completeness of Vision Evaluation Criteria

Evaluation Criteria

Weighting

Market Understanding

High

Marketing Strategy

Low

Sales Strategy

Medium

Offering (Product) Strategy

High

Business Model

Medium

Vertical/Industry Strategy

Medium

Innovation

Medium

Geographic Strategy

Medium

Source: Gartner (December 2014)

Quadrant Descriptions
Leaders
Vendors in this quadrant tend to possess high-order market understanding, global execution and
strong R&D capabilities, and funnel progressive innovation into their product road maps. These
vendors offer the broadest product functionality and cross-industry segment execution capabilities.
While these vendors are in the strongest overall position in this market, it would be a mistake for
prospects to assume that they are the only platform candidates that should be considered. Each
vendor offers a unique mix of strengths, and the overall market leaders will not necessarily have the
strongest offering for each set of functional, line of business (LOB) or regional requirements.

Challengers
Multiple vendors feature in the Challengers quadrant. They all have strong execution capabilities,
especially in specific geographic areas or market segments. Vendors in this quadrant will need to
broaden their trading vision to include deeper cross-industry product capabilities or regional market
penetration by investing in local sales and support operations.

Visionaries
The vendors in this quadrant have an advanced vision of architectural development as it relates to
the openness of their architecture, interoperability and, particularly, app-based development. They
are pioneering component-based functional deployments to trader desktops, and have a strong
focus on cloud delivery.

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Niche Players
Providers in this quadrant have some limitations, such as the range of LOBs they support, the
variety of clients they have historically supported, narrow geographic penetration, or a lack of some
advanced capabilities that would make for a stronger platform offering.

Context
Banks and investment firms need to keep pace with the changing dynamics of the trading
environment both technologically and from a business perspective. Platform renewal and
upgrade efforts can have significant impacts on a financial institution's ability to generate revenue,
service customers and meet regulatory supervisors' requirements. Vendors have begun to provide
greater technical agility and openness in their architectures and delivery mechanisms, but the
majority of financial institutions still struggle with bloated trading application portfolios, siloed data
and technology stacks, manual or ineffective processes, and significant operational integration
problems. Vendor consolidation has, to some extent, made "one-stop shopping" for platforms
possible. However, functional gaps remain, and due to complexities and nuances in markets and
jurisdictions, there is still no "silver bullet" trading solution. Procurement initiatives need to carefully
balance functional coverage and anticipated business direction with levels of implementation
support, cost and architectural vision.
CIOs and trading executives considering trading platform offerings need to:

Carefully construct relevant business cases.

Analyze internal trading capabilities, based on a recognition that the trading landscape has
changed dramatically during the past seven years. The evolution of capital controls, the need
for Volcker Rule compliance, ring-fencing initiatives, and the demise of general value
propositions highlight the importance of having a longer-term enterprise trading strategy that
reallocates capital to the most profitable trading areas.

Self-diagnose the negative business and technology forces on their trading business to reduce,
mitigate, avoid or defer risk. Business capability modeling and pace-layering techniques can aid
CIOs in architectural and investment planning (see "Toolkit: Use Pace Layering With Business
Capability Modeling to Prioritize Investment Decisions").

Plan for a move to a more agile and open technology environment founded on interoperable APIs,
data portability, advanced analytics and app-oriented development. In this context, governance is
critical to the effective management of disparate provider relationships and to ensure appropriate
return on investment.

Market Overview
This Magic Quadrant assesses the suitability and competitiveness of trading platform vendors and
their product offerings in addressing the impact of major disruptions on the market. This evaluation
uncovers the leading strategies of these vendors and products, reveals their underlying product/
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service capabilities, and affirms their relevance to the changing conditions of the banking and
investments industry.

Trends and Institutional Challenges in the Trading Platform Market

Market Structure and Business Performance

Digital trends, macroeconomic forces and new capital market regulations in the EU and, in
particular, the U.S. are challenging the historically investment-bank-dominated trading markets.
These forces are giving customers (especially buy-side customers) more choice and control in
their trading activities than they have ever had. They have also placed immense pressure on
firms that conduct trading to deliver faster, more complete and more accurate reporting of
trading activities especially derivatives.

The proliferation of dealer-to-customer (D2C) platforms and multidealer platforms (MDPs) since
2010 has given the buy-side and price-taker firms more choice and transparency concerning
where they trade. As the number of these platforms (for example, swap execution facilities)
grows, liquidity will move away from the concentrated bank-to-bank, dealer-to-dealer (D2D)
platforms, toward a more fragmented set of new D2C platforms. Agency and off-exchange
execution models are already driving demand for digital solutions that can accommodate
evolving trade workflows and higher-scale/-reliability requirements.

As power bases and relationships shift between market participants, the question of an
institution's sustainable trading value proposition in a totally digital world is a topic squarely on
the boardroom table. Optimizing return on capital employed (sell-side), and enhancing yield
(buy-side) is becoming increasingly difficult, due to product commoditization and the
recognition of the law of diminishing returns via a race for zero-execution latency. Some
progress has been made in mitigating this trend through business unit rationalization and
divestiture. However, developed-market firms will be forced to re-evaluate more deeply the
viability of certain businesses and the profitability of certain products.

The growth of emerging markets will continue to be a significant market force, as developing
world institutions seek access to deeper, more sophisticated markets. This creates new
demand for trading platforms to manage the business. However, vendor positioning outside
core European and North American markets remains embryonic at best, and local market
operating structures complicate and lengthen sales cycles.

Digitalization

Digitalization has been a significant force in the industry for several years. However, it has now
been extended from its previous concentration on the execution end of the trade life cycle into
all aspects of that life cycle from pretrade decision making/analytics, through execution, and
into processing and risk management. Outdated manual and spreadsheet-oriented approaches
to trading processes and data management are being replaced by more robust enterprise
technology environments.

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The digitalization of global markets is proceeding rapidly, but the pace varies widely across
asset classes, geographies and subindustry business groups. Investments in global connectivity
continue as firms seek elusive pools of liquidity while trying to minimize overexposure of their
investment strategies.

Market complexity, regulatory demands and trading velocity have highlighted the need for
digitalizing and automating most aspects of risk management and providing greater
transparency into market trading mechanisms and price discovery/execution.

The rapid growth in consumer-based mobility and apps is now becoming a reality, in the
institutional/corporate markets. App development is targeted at user interfaces and product
usability, management of information, and client servicing. Digitalization capabilities are now
starting to disrupt previously entrenched analog customer servicing models, and are reducing
time to market for new product and service features.

Data

The complexity of multi-asset-class trading models, and their increasing levels of automation,
requires greater breadth and depth of data and analytics to augment the trading process. This
includes the need for real-time parallel calculations, big data aggregation and visualization (for
example, integration of trading and risk) and more robust information management capabilities
to enrich pre-execution decision support and optimization tools.

For the buy side, information management capabilities are critical in order to evolve from
maintaining an Accounting Book of Record (ABOR) to maintaining an Investment Book of
Record (IBOR), and the accompanying need to increase intraday transparency of investment
decisions across all asset classes, counterparties and geographies, and all operational stages
of the investment workflow.

The exponential growth in data (structured and unstructured) increases the emphasis on the
security and confidentiality of transaction data, as well as on the ability to provide easy-to-use,
ad hoc data filtering, collation, analysis and reporting.

Increased trader mobility is adding another focus for automation of workflows, scalability and
maintaining accuracy/reliability/high availability of big data, as access shifts to widget/appinfused trading portals and a broad range of handheld devices.

System Procurement and Cost Management

Product commoditization, margin contraction and tougher capital requirements mean that the
demand for cost management and operational efficiency (for example, via shared services,
utilities and reductions in application portfolios and process complexity) has not diminished
since the end of the global financial crisis. The high cost of IT software maintenance/upgrades
is a major factor in purchasing decisions.

"Run the business" spending and compliance pressures are leaving little freedom for system/
ecosystem modernization. However, alternate system delivery models, such as those offered
through cloud and hosted solutions, are still not being aggressively adopted and are not evenly
distributed across the market, especially by the sell side. Instead, institutions are putting more

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pressure on vendors to reduce license costs by as much as 30% and shorten

implementation time frames, as long delivery schedules continue to cause them concern.

Tier 1 banks have become more interested in buying packaged applications (as opposed to
maintaining a build-only approach), and consolidating their application portfolio as part of a
more progressive modernization strategy. Institutions are looking more closely at SOAcompliant, component-based solutions as a means of delivering greater architectural flexibility.

Vendor selection is increasingly determined by the vendor's ability to manage cross-asset-class

instruments, as well as client and "own account" activities, on the same platform.

Both buy-side and sell-side institutions believe that minimizing market price impact with the
lowest implicit cost of execution is the most important criterion when it comes to best
execution. A consistent level of trade execution from market makers and brokers across assets,
geographies and venues, regardless of changes in transaction volumes, volatility and
commissions, is hard to achieve by customers especially since there is still a lack of
generally accepted benchmarks, importantly in many OTC markets.

Compliance with unclear and rapidly evolving regulatory requirements, including those for
trade/client reporting, electronic execution, liquidity aggregation and collateral management,
continues to represent a massive cost for firms.

Technology

The evolutionary path toward SOA and event-driven architecture (EDA) deployments is creating
opportunities for trading entities by unlocking the single-use code logic buried in legacy LOB
solutions. Applications for different asset classes (for example, FX and fixed income) often share
many overlapping pieces of functionality. Service-oriented development techniques are
focusing on creating components of fine and coarse granularity that can be exposed as Web
services over SOA. For example, a common interest rate accrual component could be used
across all front- and back-office applications, both providing consistency and accuracy and
extending reusability. This makes it possible to avoid maintaining multiple and distinct sets of
programs with the same functionality an approach that results in additional maintenance
costs, resource expenditure and time spent.

These SOA-based technology innovations are also simplifying the maintenance and support of
trading products, while reducing the volatility commonly associated with the introduction of new
products and services. Leading trading platform vendors are making some early progress
toward achieving componentization of their offerings. However, this first wave of componentbased systems can be characterized as possessing more coarse-grained components
groupings of unique functionality. These solutions will evolve to include more fine-grained
components during the next several years, enabling increased levels of business agility, but will
have limited impact on TCO if not made widely accessible across the enterprise and accessible
through appropriate, role-based tools for reusability. Progressive vendors align themselves with
this strategy for four primary reasons:

It is a market-differentiating capability for banks, which translates into sales for vendors.

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This approach rationalizes overlapping functionality and enables innovation for both
vendors and banks through easily accessed components.

It also means that vendors can upgrade their solutions in a more efficient and less
disruptive fashion.

This strategy enhances the ability to enter new markets with targeted products and hybrid
architectures, providing future sourcing flexibility, including the potential selection of public
or community cloud.

In Summation
CEOs of financial institutions are emphasizing growth through business agility and profit
improvement, customer engagement and cost management as overarching priorities (see "The
2014 Gartner CEO and Senior Executive Survey: A Financial Services Industry Perspective"). CIOs'
efforts to reuse components offer an opportunity to deliver business agility through increased
simplicity. However, historical trading silos have not been totally broken down, making it impossible
to take full advantage of componentization and, so, realize cost optimization. Moreover, many
vendors seem reluctant to make efforts to break up their monolithic architectures that extend
beyond supplying marketing wrappers. System configurability remains important in this context, but
the progression to a more open architecture, with attendant APIs and internally developed apps, will
determine the ongoing growth and success of vendor offerings.
Customer experience is now one of the more significant weightings in the solution evaluation matrix,
as well as in the market understanding assessment that determines the technology provider's ability
to understand buyers' needs and translate those needs into products and services for that specific
market. In certain markets, for example, Latin America, standard support of regional regulatory and
local trading requirements is a key capability that trading platform vendors with global aspirations
must acquire.
This Magic Quadrant can assist CIOs evaluating trading platform vendors and products by enabling
them to focus on what matters most: the relevance of vendor and product attributes, and their
alignment with critical business strategies and technology trends. The general finding for this year's
Magic Quadrant is that many trading platform vendors are focused on:

Adding more license seats to existing customers

Penetrating beyond developed markets

Reinforcing risk management capabilities

Developing road maps for apps, without necessarily investing in R&D to create more open
architectures

Preparing for more aggressive cloud-based delivery

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Vendor Landscape
Gartner predicts, based on vendor estimates of platform market growth, a global growth rate of only
8% for 2014, with a clear focus on Asia/Pacific, and the Middle East and Africa. Existing-client
license expansion outstrips "new logo" business, indicating continued tight spending conditions
(pricing has been discounted by as much as 30% in some deals) and the highly competitive nature
of vendor offerings.
Geographic distribution has remained fairly static from 2013 to 2014, although there has been a
slight uptick in the EU and in Asia/Pacific. The projected 2014 platform deployment geographic
distribution is: North America, 43%; Latin America, 2%; EU member countries, 37%; APAC, 14%;
and the Middle East and Africa, 4%.
Most vendor revenue comes from application licensing: 70% of customers opted for a perpetual
license model, rather than a one-time license fee; and 80% continue to pay an annual maintenance
fee bundled into the license.
General license and maintenance cost is charged on an annual basis, and in most cases, both
license and maintenance costs are included under license fees. The most common vendor
contracts attach 20% of the license fees to maintenance costs, but these can go as high as 24%.

Implementation Costs and Time Scales

The incidence of cloud computing remains generally limited, though the buy side has been more
active than the sell side in pursuing SaaS delivery models. Most customers implement software inhouse, with only 12% opting for a SaaS model and 10% for a hosted service. This is likely to
change, however, as the pace of utility-based consolidation increases and operational costs place
even more pressure on trading institutions.
Professional services implementation costs average 1.18 times the total license cost. However, this
absolute increment can be misleading. Gartner client inquiries indicate that implementation costs
can extend to as much as four times the absolute license fee, due to project scope creep and
changes in a financial institution's environment.
Many vendors try to emphasize configuration, rather than customization, in an effort to reduce an
institution's expenses. Seventy-three percent of customers used configuration and installation
services directly from the software vendor, and 45% used professional services to customize code
for specific trading requirements.
Emerging-market implementations, however, are often problematic and suffer considerable budget
and time overruns, due to lack of local vendor capabilities and knowledge. Despite the "ideal"
implementation time scales indicated by vendors (that is, 13 months for Tier 1, 10 months for Tier 2,
seven months for Tier 3 and five months for Tier 4 implementations), Gartner client inquiries show
that it is not unusual for financial institutions to have implementations run into multiyear scenarios.
CIOs need to be extremely diligent in establishing SLAs to protect against such eventualities.

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Implementation Challenges

Access to timely and specialized professional services support, especially outside core
developed markets, remains challenging for financial institutions, in terms of both technical and
system usability knowledge.

Internal integration issues across multiple interdependent systems are often larger and more
complex than in the original scope of work, especially in the context of global deployments, and
this leads to delays and cost overruns.

IT requirements for business process re-engineering using market standards as opposed to

proprietary customization sometimes conflict with business demands for greater levels of
competitive differentiation.

Changes in Buyer Behavior

Sales cycles are lengthening to three to five years, in some cases as regulatory
considerations impact vendor negotiations. Ironically, even if the decision cycle is slow, time-tomarket pressures once the decision is made are actually greater.

Enhanced due diligence is playing a role as portfolios are rationalized and vendor relationship
and stability are being considered more critical. Selection criteria are focused on longer-term
partnerships that are capable of handling future institutional business dynamics that may be
very different from current business requirements.

There is increasing demand for professional services beyond pure product implementation (for
example, business-process-oriented services, compliance advisory services and
interdependent system/process customization). However, these services are requested on a
fixed-cost basis.

TCO pressures are driving vendors to offer more for less (for example, in terms of functionality
and product/service bundling). The market is also extremely price-sensitive, with financial
institutions pressing vendors for price discounts (in some cases up to 30%) and variable
payment and deployment models. From a delivery model perspective, managed services are
increasingly expected or assumed in new deals, especially in North America, and hosted and
SaaS solutions are gaining broader acceptance, especially as a means of reducing upfront
capital expenditure costs. Vendor payments are often linked to specific economic milestones,
with optionality built into contracts.

Gartner Recommended Reading

Some documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.
"Business Moment: The Internet of Things Triggers a Cascade of Financial Services Activity Among
Things, People and Businesses"
"Magic Quadrant for Treasury and Trading Core Systems"

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"Bankers' Guide to Cross-Asset-Class Treasury and Trading Software Application Vendor

Functionality"
"Toolkit: RFP Template for Treasury and Trading Core System Selection"
"Top Global Banks' IT Investments, 2013"
"Digital Banking Requires Open Bank Systems"
"How Markets and Vendors Are Evaluated in Gartner Magic Quadrants"
Evidence
The following sources of information were used in developing the analysis in this research
document:

An inclusion survey was completed by the vast majority of vendors involved in the trading
platform Magic Quadrant research effort. Key trading platform product information included:
information on professional services capabilities; multilanguage and multi-asset-class support;
multicountry deployments; total production deployments; and net new customers. The survey
data was evaluated against the set of evaluation criteria discussed above.

Bank references were requested from all vendors participating in the trading platform Magic
Quadrant. Bank references reflected both new bank deployments and customer support for
longer-term customers. Bank references were surveyed via Microsoft Word documents sent by
the analysis team.

Main submission documents were received from all vendors included in the trading platform
Magic Quadrant research process. Documentation included a preformatted Microsoft Excel
data collection template, with supporting PDF and Microsoft PowerPoint documents.

Main submission documents were received from all vendors included in the trading platform
Magic Quadrant research process. Documentation included a preformatted Excel data
collection template, with supporting PDF and PowerPoint documents.

Vendor Interviews: Interview sessions were conducted with each participating vendor. These
included a Q&A session led by the analysts, and each vendor was offered the opportunity to
present its solution using WebEx.

Note 1 Financial Institution Tiers Defined

Tier 1 institutions are multiproduct/multi-asset-class market makers. Tier 2 are international banks
with market-making capacity in a small subset of asset classes. Tier 3 are larger national banks
operating as price takers predominantly in "plain vanilla" products. Tier 4 are small emerging
market national banks that have extremely limited trading/price taking requirements (mainly in FX
and money markets).

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Evaluation Criteria Definitions

Ability to Execute
Product/Service: Core goods and services offered by the vendor for the defined
market. This includes current product/service capabilities, quality, feature sets, skills
and so on, whether offered natively or through OEM agreements/partnerships as
defined in the market definition and detailed in the subcriteria.
Overall Viability: Viability includes an assessment of the overall organization's financial
health, the financial and practical success of the business unit, and the likelihood that
the individual business unit will continue investing in the product, will continue offering
the product and will advance the state of the art within the organization's portfolio of
products.
Sales Execution/Pricing: The vendor's capabilities in all presales activities and the
structure that supports them. This includes deal management, pricing and negotiation,
presales support, and the overall effectiveness of the sales channel.
Market Responsiveness/Record: Ability to respond, change direction, be flexible and
achieve competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act, customer
needs evolve and market dynamics change. This criterion also considers the vendor's
history of responsiveness.
Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of programs designed
to deliver the organization's message to influence the market, promote the brand and
business, increase awareness of the products, and establish a positive identification
with the product/brand and organization in the minds of buyers. This "mind share" can
be driven by a combination of publicity, promotional initiatives, thought leadership,
word of mouth and sales activities.
Customer Experience: Relationships, products and services/programs that enable
clients to be successful with the products evaluated. Specifically, this includes the ways
customers receive technical support or account support. This can also include ancillary
tools, customer support programs (and the quality thereof), availability of user groups,
service-level agreements and so on.
Operations: The ability of the organization to meet its goals and commitments. Factors
include the quality of the organizational structure, including skills, experiences,
programs, systems and other vehicles that enable the organization to operate
effectively and efficiently on an ongoing basis.
Completeness of Vision
Market Understanding: Ability of the vendor to understand buyers' wants and needs
and to translate those into products and services. Vendors that show the highest
degree of vision listen to and understand buyers' wants and needs, and can shape or
enhance those with their added vision.
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Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of messages consistently

communicated throughout the organization and externalized through the website,
advertising, customer programs and positioning statements.
Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling products that uses the appropriate network of
direct and indirect sales, marketing, service, and communication affiliates that extend
the scope and depth of market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and the
customer base.
Offering (Product) Strategy: The vendor's approach to product development and
delivery that emphasizes differentiation, functionality, methodology and feature sets as
they map to current and future requirements.
Business Model: The soundness and logic of the vendor's underlying business
proposition.
Vertical/Industry Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and
offerings to meet the specific needs of individual market segments, including vertical
markets.
Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and synergistic layouts of resources,
expertise or capital for investment, consolidation, defensive or pre-emptive purposes.
Geographic Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to
meet the specific needs of geographies outside the "home" or native geography, either
directly or through partners, channels and subsidiaries as appropriate for that
geography and market.

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