Introduction

“Verticalization” of IT Application Development & Maintenance (ADM) services represents a major paradigm shift in the global services market today. Unlike five years ago when IT ADM services were procured primarily by the “horizontal” technology stack (e.g., J2EE, SAP, COBOL), enterprises are now evaluating vertical domain expertise as the single most important criteria for short-listing and selecting service providers.

In response to the growing trend of “verticalized” ADM service delivery, leading service providers focused on IT Applications Outsourcing (AO) in Capital Markets, are investing aggressively in growing their capabilities and gaining domain experience for serving clients. These investments include increased focus on off-the-shelf industry-solutions, certification and training across various financial market products, and alliances with specialist capital markets technology players. Further, given the critical role of global sourcing in IT AO services (especially India-based delivery), a significant amount of effort and investments are being expended by service providers to build scale and domain expertise for serving capital markets clients from their offshore delivery centers.

This Everest Group viewpoint provides an assessment of offshore delivery maturity of the service provider landscape specific to off-the-shelf tools technologies for the capital markets vertical and asset classes in the financial markets.