more of the same., page-4

I pretty well agree with this general sentiment. With the big banks and their important (capital and/or regulatory) risk management operations, RFPs get issued from time to time. Of the many RFPs that get issued, in practice, a good proportion don't actually blossom into a real, budgeted projects. Sometimes a project gets kicked off and there is a "preferred vendor" but they often go pear-shaped and get skittled (often during the "business plan", "pilot" or "detailed proposal" phase). Hence, even though there are a lot of banks out there, the number of real opportunities for risk solutions each year with a decent budget and a fairdinkum project is quite small. Of these, there is usually a big fight within the bank between people who want to do an internal build, perhaps with the aid of an Accenture or such, and others who don't trust their IT people and would be happy to outsource the lot if they could.

For the ones that go with an external vendor solution, there can be some decent money in the license fee, implementation consulting and maintenance/customisation. However, these are precisely the morsels that Sungard (Adaptiv), Fitch (Algorithmics), Reuters, Fermat, Murex, Calypso and others are all after. I suspect that all of these companies are far better capitalised and funded than IT&e and this is why I suspect that the latest IT&e announcements are rats and mice.