Although the economic downturn has had an impact on the booming retail banking market of years past, international retail core banking (IRCB) systems are increasingly the focus of banks searching for competitive advantage across multiple geographies. Traditional and nontraditional banks searching for opportunities to build capital through innovative deposit-taking strategies, as well as the ability to reduce operational costs and decrease product time-to-market, need to reassess their current core banking technology's ability to meet these shifting priorities.

The IRCB market is in transition, and has become progressively volatile as vendor consolidation and advanced architecture solutions shake up the status quo. Banks exploring a renewal of back-office systems are finding a changed vendor/product search process that departs significantly from past selection projects. As banks search for a competitive edge, strategic decision criteria and technologies are in play that determine the best vendor/product fit. Successful banks will navigate the considerable risks associated with these replacement programs by keeping abreast of current technology trends and the state of the vendor landscape (see Figure 1).

Magic Quadrant





Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for International Retail Core Banking

Source: Gartner (July 2009)

Market Overview

Core banking renewal has historically been viewed as a high-cost and high-risk undertaking that few banks execute unless they have no other choice. This perspective is beginning to change. Rather than slowing renewal activity, the financial crisis is actually serving to accelerate it. While renewal is still high-cost and high-risk, it is also high-reward because it enables agility and efficiency in ways that are transformational for the bank. Many banks are viewing this time period as an opportunity to gain traction in their respective markets as well as lasting competitive advantage.

Aside from the accelerating number of core banking replacement decisions, the vendor consolidation trend characteristic of past years took a brief respite during 2008, but shows signs of reigniting in 2009. The technology evolution to services-enabled, component-based core solutions that promise to enhance business agility is gaining momentum, and many banks are viewing this time of industry turmoil as an opportunity to gain traction in their respective markets.

Traditional, line-of-business (LOB) legacy applications and the vendors that support them are increasingly proving to be unwieldy weapons in the battle for consumers. Future go-to-market strategies that require a different approach to banking — such as chasing migrating workers across the globe, pursuing unbanked and underbanked populations and accommodating general consumer trends — require unconventional business approaches and technologies. This is the future of banking.

The face of banking decision makers — detailed in past Gartner research — is transitioning increasingly from senior IT leaders to business owners and board members. Core technologies are evolving to highly agile architectures, and the implications for making the wrong decision will be lasting and could put banks at competitive risk.

This Magic Quadrant assesses the suitability of core banking system providers and their product offerings to address the impact of these and other trends in the IRCB market. Gartner has evaluated the competitive landscape of core banking vendors that service the future of the international retail banking market. This evaluation has uncovered the leading strategies of these vendors/products, revealed their underlying product/service capabilities and affirmed their relevance to the changing conditions of the banking industry.

The evaluation began with 39 candidates for the IRCB Magic Quadrant for 2009, and resulted in a qualified group of 23 combinations of vendors and products that represent the major movers in the retail core banking system market. This final group submitted information ranging from long-term strategies through to product road maps. Additionally, Gartner conducted interviews with reference banks to resolve the placement of group finalists on the Magic Quadrant.

The general findings are that many core banking vendors have an elevated sense of urgency to keep ahead of the demand curve for these technology requirements; others have taken more-measured and conservative steps, and still others are moving more tactically through this wave of renewal activity.

Market Definition/Description

Gartner defines a core banking system as a back-end system that processes daily banking transactions, and posts updates to accounts and other financial records. Core banking systems typically include deposit, loan and credit-processing capabilities, with interfaces to general ledger systems and reporting tools. Gartner's IRCB Magic Quadrant assesses vendors on the multicurrency products they offer in support of a bank's financial transaction management in the retail banking market. Since there are many Islamic banking solutions that don't support standard retail banking capabilities, Gartner elected to keep the scope consistent with previous IRCB Magic Quadrant research efforts.

Although the definition of a core banking system hasn't shifted dramatically throughout the years, changes abound in the software and hardware environments for back-office systems. Hardware platforms and operating systems previously were delineated "vendor turf" or market segment for a given core banking product (for example, HP9000, Unisys ClearPath mainframe and IBM iSeries). However, core banking systems are becoming less platform- and database-dependent, causing overlapping market segments for the vendors and increased competitive conditions. This means more choices for banks. Simultaneously, operating systems like Unix are reaching into traditional mainframe banking segments through highly scalable systems — benchmarks that easily process more than 120 million accounts. As these hardware and operating system boundaries blur, competitive vendor market segmentation is dissipating.

As hardware and operating systems forge ahead, changes in core banking functionality have reached a relative plateau and have not been significant factors in the retail core replacement cycle. Gaining access to customer information — a challenge with product-centric core solutions — is definitely a driver for adopting open-architected, easily integrated core banking systems.

The maturation of middleware messaging architectures, and the evolutionary path to services and event-driven constructs, are leading to opportunities that will unlock the single-use logic in these legacy LOB solutions. Development techniques, such as service-oriented development, are focusing on creating components of fine and coarse granularity that may be exposed to services. For example, a common interest accrual component is used across all front- and back-office applications, providing consistency and accuracy while extending reusability. This avoids maintaining multiple and distinct sets of programs with the same functionality that result in additional costs, resources and time.

These types of technology innovations are also simplifying the maintenance and support of products while reducing the volatility commonly associated with the introduction of new products and services. Leading core banking vendors already are progressing quickly to achieve componentization of their back-office offerings. However, this first wave of component-based systems can be characterized as possessing more coarse-grained components; groupings of fine-grained components. These solutions will evolve to more fine-grained components during the next two to five years, enabling increased levels of business agility.

Because changes in banking functionality haven't been market movers, many packaged core banking vendors have been afforded the opportunity to play catch-up with product functionalities that once served as differentiators in homegrown or highly customized solutions — especially in large bank markets. For example, while in the past loan syndication was a specialized functional capability, many core banking vendors now support at least basic capabilities in this area.

The result of these market changes translates to a highly competitive vendor landscape for core banking renewal. Vendor viability, a decision point mostly overlooked in prior core banking renewal efforts, is now one of the more significant weightings in a decision matrix. Additionally, vendor market volatility and end-user demands for broader-based functional alternatives to best-of-breed LOB applications are driving unprecedented partnerships and acquisitions among former competitors (for example, the SAP/Callatay & Wouters partnership, the Fidelity National Information Services/Metavante Banking Solutions acquisition).

The significance and long-reaching effects of core banking renewal, as opposed to the relatively short tenure of bank CIOs, are forcing these core replacement decisions onto the laps of business leaders and boardroom members. The game is changing, and not everyone is comfortable with their new roles or perhaps knowledgeable enough to ask the right questions to avoid a poor choice. Successful banks will navigate the considerable risks associated with these replacement programs by keeping abreast of current technology trends and the state of the vendor landscape.

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

Regional and global vendor consolidation is a factor in the competitive balance of the IRCB market; however, it is still a splintered market served by traditional vendors and some relatively new offerings such as Misys BankFusion. Vendor qualification for inclusion in the 2009 IRCB Magic Quadrant was centered on market-established players and a number of relatively new entrants that show potential.

Inclusion

To be included in the 2009 IRCB Magic Quadrant, a vendor had to demonstrate:
Having market traction and momentum Having at least 32 production customers for IRCB functionality (as defined in the IRCB product capabilities section) Having at least one newly contracted customer for IRCB functionality during the past four rolling quarters

IRCB Product Capabilities

A vendor had to support multilingual and multicurrency capabilities plus IRCB functionality for at least six of these seven modules:
Current accounts Savings Fixed-term deposits Consumer loans Commercial loans Mortgage loans General ledger

Short-Term Viability

A vendor must have sufficient professional services or partners to fulfill current and future customer demands during the next 12 months.

There were 39 initial combinations of software vendors and products for the IRCB Magic Quadrant; 23 finalists were selected for inclusion. The selection criteria served to identify vendor products that possessed sufficient market traction, supported basic retail functionality and international support, and provided evidence of short-term viability.

Exclusion

Many core banking vendors were invited to participate in the initial screening process, but some were not selected due to insufficient product market qualifications in the Magic Quadrant qualification process.

The vendor/product combinations that did not meet the inclusion criteria were:
Allshare (Quaestor) CSC (Hogan Systems) Fidelity National Information Services (Corebank COBOL) Fidelity National Information Services (Corebank J2EE) Fidelity National Information Services (Systematics) Metavante Banking Solutions (Bankway) Nucleus Software Exports (FinnOne) Silverlake (SIBS) SlaterLabs (Etude) SunGard (Ambit) Temenos (TCB) Tieto (CBS) Tieto (Banksyst) TriSyn Group (Infopoint)

Added

New entrants to the 2009 IRCB Magic Quadrant are:
BML Istisharat (ICBS) InfraSoftTech (OMNIEnterprise) Misys (BankFusion) Neptune Software (Equinox) Neptune Software (Rubikon) Path Solutions (iMAL) Polaris Software Lab (Intellect) Viveo (V.bank)

Dropped

Vendors dropped from the 2009 IRCB Magic Quadrant research effort due to not meeting the current inclusion criteria were:
Fidelity National Information Services (Corebank COBOL) Fidelity National Information Services (Corebank J2EE) Fidelity National Information Services (Systematics) Silverlake (SIBS) Temenos (TCB) Tieto (CBS)

Evaluation Criteria

Ability to Execute

The evaluation criteria (see Table 1) for this axis focused on traction in the market and on how the vendor/product is positioned to sustain support for near-term banking market requirements and commitments.

This Magic Quadrant emphasizes these criteria as "high," which associates increased importance for banks that are selecting core banking systems.

Product/Service

This element of the ability to execute is highly concentrated on:
The capabilities and road map of the product The technical aspect, which includes architecture, component orientation and real-time capacity of the system The professional services offered in association with the product

Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial, Strategy, Organization)

This element corresponds to the heightened importance of vendor stability and the likelihood of sustained/increased investment in the product line.

Customer Experience

This element includes focus on customer interactions linked to service-level agreements and implementation experiences. In addition, either reference interviews were conducted — with more than 70 banks that encompassed all vendor/product participants except Misys (Bankmaster), Open Solutions (TCBS) and Harland Financial Solutions (Phoenix) — or information was derived from Gartner clients during the past rolling four quarters.

Operations

This area of evaluation centers on how the vendor/product organization is equipped to provide infrastructure mechanisms/resources for consistent attainment of business goals, including:
Program/project management structures/initiatives Maintenance and major release practices Quality initiatives

Table 1. Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria

Evaluation Criteria
Weighting

Product/Service
High

Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial, Strategy, Organization)
High

Sales Execution/Pricing
Standard

Market Responsiveness and Track Record
Standard

Marketing Execution
Standard

Customer Experience
High

Operations
High


Source: Gartner (July 2009)

Completeness of Vision

The evaluation criteria for this axis are based on the effectiveness of vendor/product strategies that link them to the market (see Table 2).

This research emphasizes these criteria as "high," which associates increased importance for banks selecting core banking systems.

Market Understanding

This element of completeness of vision is centered on the ability of the vendor to respond to anticipated and unanticipated market requirements. This demonstrates how closely connected the vendor is to the banking industry.

Offering (Product) Strategy

This element corresponds to the organizational effectiveness of the development and delivery capabilities of the vendor/product group — consistency and quality are key attributes.

Vertical/Industry Strategy

This area of the evaluation associates banking industry commitment to initiatives such as participation in standards organizations and other industry groups. The area also focuses on unique hiring practices, training and other means to maintain close industry relevance.

Table 2. Completeness of Vision Evaluation Criteria

Evaluation Criteria
Weighting

Market Understanding
High

Marketing Strategy
Standard

Sales Strategy
Standard

Offering (Product) Strategy
High

Business Model
Standard

Vertical/Industry Strategy
High

Innovation
Standard

Geographic Strategy
Standard

Leaders

This quadrant is occupied by vendors that possess a strong banking market understanding, and most have a measurable strategy for disaggregating core banking software functionality into component-based constructs. Most vendors exhibit highly developed and certified development and delivery of quality methodologies or are executing on a strategic road map to attain certification. Most vendors in this quadrant have extensive marketing delivery and sales channels. Some higher-rated vendors share conspicuous operational organization approaches to key performance indicators and show a clear willingness to own and be accountable for a successful customer experience.

Challengers

Vendors in this quadrant exhibit progressive process methodologies for innovation, with an emphasis on architectural enhancements designed to improve business agility. These vendors show active commitments to the evolution of their product architectures. Maintaining a strong commitment to the implementation and customer support experience is evident; although strategic sales and marketing approaches lag behind some leaders, vendors in the Challengers quadrant are evolutionary.

Visionaries

The majority of vendors in the Visionaries quadrant are moving toward advanced architectures and demonstrate market understanding in their alignment to support business agility, although some are early in their efforts and haven't yet executed extensively in their respective target markets. Wholesale quality initiatives that could provide more-consistent development and delivery results are not as well-developed as those in the Leaders quadrant. For most visionary vendors, marketing execution is not consistent across selected geographies, which is slowing growth.

Niche Players

Niche players are vendors with mixed profiles. Almost half of these vendors lack effective product road maps to migrate legacy applications to component-based software systems. For these vendors/products, deep and mature functionality provides market relevance and mapping to LOB capabilities. Enterprises can expect standard to above-average levels of customer support and implementation from these systems. Some vendors in this quadrant may not make the transition to compete effectively with products that are evolving toward advanced architecture models to leverage service-oriented and event-driven architectures.

Vendor Strengths and Cautions

Accenture (Alnova)

Strengths
Consolidating seamless strengths of business consulting services and product capabilities, Accenture has built an enduring business unit viability. Accenture leverages a centralized marketing and sales network (client account teams) to effectively propose solutions that combine service and product. Customers consistently and positively reference the overall implementation experience and, specifically, the implementation program and project management.

Caution
Although Accenture delivers an effective combination of banking product and service, high levels of customization are contrary to the evolving trend of bank requirements to reduce IT maintenance spending and increase business agility. Gartner believes that the viability of a highly modified software package delivery model without periodic releases has niche market appeal.

BML Istisharat (ICBS)

Strengths
The BML customer experience is a strong part of the value proposition for ICBS clients. Sales execution and pricing are transparent, with standard pricing matrices. The operations quality methodologies support advanced performance indicators.

Caution
BML's ability to anticipate market requirements is not fully aligned with a process-oriented approach to guide product and service relevance with market demand.

Callatay & Wouters (Thaler)

Strengths
Extensive and effective process-oriented sales life cycle management promotes a consistent customer experience from presales through live production. Customer interviews show evidence of effective partnership approaches to the implementation experience, including penalty/reward contractual clauses. C&W's development partnership with SAP provides customers with access to the NetWeaver product and a path to SAP's Business Process Platform, thus leveraging Thaler and SAP banking services. Their involvement and subsequent leverage of the Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) is paying off for the development organization.

Caution
Banks may require local expertise to reduce risk on requirements gap analysis within regions where the product has not been installed previously. All core banking vendors share this shortcoming.

Fiserv (Signature)

Fiserv pursued a rebranding exercise in 2009; Signature was formerly known as ICBS.

Strengths
Fiserv Signature has advanced the vendor's market understanding through higher reliance on process-based methodologies. Highly effective customer support ranks Fiserv Signature as a significant contributor to bank satisfaction in production environments. Fiserv has extensive relationships with multiple banking industry groups to gain closer alignment with industry trends and practices.

Caution
Although Fiserv is offering an additional Linux product offering beyond its primary product (RPG/ILE on the IBM iSeries), Fiserv's competition is already further down the path of providing hardware, operating system and database-neutral solutions in line with industry trends.

FNIS (Core24)

Strengths
Bank implementation experiences and customer support with Core24 were consistent and highly rated. Core24 product capability is aligned well with German market requirements. Core24 consulting services are extensive, and range from strategic, process-centric services to performance measurement and analyses. FNIS deploys a common development and investment methodology across all product lines, encompassing a process-oriented market understanding (setting the context) and investment decision processes.

Caution
Although marketed to Central European countries, the customer base is primarily small-to-midsize German banks.

FNIS (Profile)

Strengths
FNIS's strategic product — targeted to Tier 1 and Tier 2 global banks — is component-based. Although written in a proprietary language (Profile Scripting Language), it has similar characteristics to Java (for example, classes, objects and properties); the code base can be converted to Java. Profile has broad distribution (more than 192 banks) over multiple regions. The customer support experience for production customers is highly rated.

Caution
Although support for an Oracle database option is generally available in Profile release 7.0 and support for IBM DB2 is planned for 2009 availability, the vast majority of customers use FNIS's GT.M database option.

Harland Financial Solutions (Phoenix System)

Strengths
Through International Turnkey Systems (ITS) — Harland's primary international distributor and strategic development partner — project management processes align with Project Management Body of Knowledge standards from the Project Management Institute. ITS is certified as Level 5 under Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). Through Harland's distributors, ITS and Data Action, the vendor has on-the-ground perspectives of market requirements in targeted markets. Although Harland directly manages the U.S. and Caribbean regions, it also provides high-level guidance — functionally and architecturally — to independent companies for other regions (that is, Data Action [Australia] and ITS [Middle East and South Asia]). These organizations largely administer the Phoenix brand through services, self-developed customization and delivery.

Caution
Market understanding is not tightly managed through process-oriented methodologies and could lead to incompatible product offering road maps.

Infosys Technologies (Finacle)

Strengths
Through process-oriented methodologies, Infosys Technologies uses varied input sources, such as primary research, industry experts and consulting organizations, to build and validate short- and long-term business plans. Starting with established product principles, Infosys deploys effective buy, build and alliance processes to translate market requirements into technology solutions. Quality methodologies permeate the operations organization to monitor process adherence and performance.

Caution
Although all core banking vendors share this shortcoming — banks may require local expertise to reduce risk on requirements gap analysis within regions where the product has not been installed previously.

InfraSoftTech (OMNIEnterprise)

Strengths
OMNIEnterprise reference clients rated the implementation and ongoing customer support highly. InfraSoftTech's quality methodologies within operations are well-developed. OMNIEnterprise product breadth and capability ranked favorably.

Caution
InfraSoftTech's marketing and sales network is not as extensive as that of peer competitors.

Misys (BankFusion Universal Banking)

As of the information-gathering deadline for this Magic Quadrant, this product had one bank client in a production environment.

Strengths
BankFusion Universal Banking is a solution built and deployed on the BankFusion platform and is a Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE), component-based core banking system, where process flows can be exposed as Web services. Misys has deployed a considerably improved product life cycle management program that will benefit development decisions for its product offerings. Misys is rolling out a definitive partner program (system integration, hardware supplier, etc.) that should provide improved bandwidth, a value-added benefit to banks and a consistent approach to its partner network.

Caution
Although Misys is aggressively developing this offering, this product is relatively early in its life cycle, and functionality will evolve incrementally.

Misys (Bankmaster)

Strengths
Misys has deployed a considerably improved product life cycle management program that will benefit development decisions for its product offerings. Misys is rolling out a definitive partner program (system integration, hardware supplier, etc.) that should provide improved bandwidth, a value-added benefit to banks and a consistent approach to its partner network. Bankmaster is mature and has deep functionality with geographically broad support.

Caution
Bankmaster's market relevance to growth banks pursuing open-architected, services-based solutions is limited by the proprietary product architecture; a migration path to the Misys BankFusion Universal Banking is the current strategy.

Misys (Equation)

Strengths
Misys has strong, emerging-market understanding and possesses deep functionality in Equation — for example, regional expertise such as Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States — to cater to customer demands. Misys has deployed a considerably improved product life cycle management program that will benefit development decisions for its product offerings. Misys is rolling out a definitive partner program (system integration, hardware supplier, etc.) that should provide improved bandwidth, a value-added benefit to banks and a consistent approach to its partner network.

Caution
Equation is a platform-dependent solution running on the IBM iSeries, while its competition is already further down the path of providing hardware, operating system and database-neutral solutions in line with industry trends.

Neptune Software (Equinox)

Strengths
Neptune's Equinox customer base is spread across the African continent — local support is well-established there. Neptune deploys a hybrid sales distribution model with internal as well as partner programs. Equinox has broad product coverage for the African continent.

Caution
Although Equinox is receiving limited upgrades, Garner believes that this legacy product's customer base will eventually migrate to the Rubikon product line.

Neptune Software (Rubikon)

As of the information-gathering deadline for this Magic Quadrant, this product had one bank client in a production environment.

Strengths
Rubikon is constructed with Java EE and is a component-based, core banking system. Relating to the architectural design, long-term product viability for Rubikon is expected. Knowledge of the U.K. and African banking market is well-understood, and the requisite local support is well established. Partners cover continental Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Caution
Rubikon (2007) is in a relatively early phase of deployment; functionality will evolve incrementally over time.

Open Solutions (TCBS)

Strengths
Open Solutions is replicating customer interaction programs, such as the CEO Forum, from its traditional North American markets to emerging markets. Open Solutions provides extensive consulting services for customers, including business continuity planning, risk assessment, performance metric tracking and training proficiency testing. Open Solutions provides innovative customer support through its Client Care group, including auto-escalation, a product knowledgebase and four assigned specialists/analysts for each client.

Caution
Resolving initial functional requirement gaps and/or capabilities from acquisitions or new markets can be a challenging aspect of Open Solutions' growth.

Oracle Financial Services (Flexcube Core Banking)

Strengths
Market understanding is a strong value proposition as Flexcube Core Banking anticipates market requirements through process-oriented methodologies. Oracle Financial Services leverages CMMI (Level 5) for software development and a project methodology (i-prime), which also serves as a knowledge management repository for subsequent implementations. Flexcube Core Banking reference clients rated the implementation as well as ongoing customer support highly.

Caution
Source code is not provided, and customers must rely on Oracle Financial Services for direct customization; data table definitions also are not supplied.

Oracle Financial Services (Flexcube Universal Banking)

Strengths
Advances in process orchestration leveraging Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) is an important strategic path for this product line as back-office componentization becomes a reality. Flexcube Universal Banking reference clients rated the implementation as well as ongoing customer support highly. Oracle Financial Services leverages CMMI Level 5 for software development and a project methodology (i-prime), which also serves as a knowledge management repository for subsequent implementations.

Caution
Source code is not provided, and customers must rely on Oracle Financial Services for direct customization; data table definitions also are not supplied.

Path Solutions (iMAL)

Strengths
Path Solutions' industry strategy ranks high through active participation in banking industry groups and training/hiring practices to maintain staff banking knowledge. The iMAL marketing strategy provides targeted and coordinated messaging based on multiple channels, such as primary research and inputs from market understanding. iMAL has been developed using Sybase PowerBuilder and Java, offering a large number of consumable services.

Caution
Path Solutions attains market understanding through multiple resources, but the deployed process-oriented methodology may not provide consistent results.

Polaris Software Lab (Intellect)

Strengths
Intellect is a service-enabled, component-based core banking system. Polaris provides advanced service programs such as progressive modernization of legacy environments that help reduce risk in more complex, transformational core banking replacement programs. Implementation and ongoing customer support in a live production environment is highly rated by reference banks.

Caution
Although multiple resources and channels are used to discern market understanding, process-oriented methodologies associated with this approach aren't as evolved.

SAP (Transactional Banking)

Strengths
SAP derives its market understanding through direct customer and partner interactions, institutionalized customer groups (such as the Banking Industry Architecture Network), and participation in industry groups and standards bodies. Quality methodologies permeate the operations organization to monitor process adherence and performance. SAP's foundational product, NetWeaver, is a key deliverable with Transactional Banking. In addition to its role as an integration broker, this product provides capabilities such as collaboration, multichannel integration, knowledge management and a source of master data management.

Caution
Although larger banks are beginning to sign with SAP for core banking programs, the marketing execution for Transactional Banking could be more effective.

Tata Consultancy Services (BaNCS)

Strengths
The TCS strategic product business unit — TCS Financial Solutions — has demonstrated considerable product development execution in building a service-oriented, component-based core banking solution that is competing effectively with leaders in the core banking market. The TCS consulting services group conveys appreciable value to TCS BaNCS, especially for large and complex bank replacement programs. TCS's services experience in large bank environments aligns well with TCS Financial Solutions' system integration requirements.

Caution
As TCS Financial Solutions gains traction in the core banking market, significant coordination efforts between the product development and delivery organizations will be required to leverage reusable product functionality.

Temenos Group (T24)

Strengths
Through T24's broad distribution across multiple regions (more than 400 clients), market understanding is a strong value proposition. T24's sales and execution, in conjunction with its market responsiveness and track record, has forged a leadership role in the industry. Temenos has turned the corner on providing more-consistent customer experiences in implementation efforts and ongoing customer support.

Caution
Monitor Temenos' commitment to establish quality methodologies across the organization.

Viveo (V.bank)

Strengths
V.bank is an advanced, services-enabled, component-based core banking system. Viveo's sales execution and pricing strategies exhibit considerable flexibility and thought leadership regarding the future of core banking. Reference banks highly rate its implementation efforts and ongoing customer support.

Caution
Viveo's lack of direct involvement in bank industry groups and associations could lead to a more reactive approach in keeping pace with changing market conditions.