一个客户，两个系统

在过去的二十年中，订单管理系统通过消除其股票交易所产生的大部分文书工作，转变了资产管理人员的前台运营。20世纪80年代中期由Seth Merrin的父亲发明，那么Oppenheimer＆Co.的年轻套利交易员，它产生了一个小但强烈的竞争力的软件部门，在证券行业的驱动方面发挥了关键作用，迈向交易流程的完全自动化 - 什么现在称为直接处理。

Today, however, institutional trading is a very different business from the one that order management systems were initially designed to serve, and the companies that buy-side firms depend on for the latest in OMS technology find themselves at a crossroads.

这些专业厂商之间的竞争是菲尔cer than ever. About a dozen companies -- among them privately held boutiques Charles River Development, Eze Castle Software, LatentZero and Macgregor; investment systems giants Advent Software and SunGard Data Systems; and the Bloomberg and Reuters Group trading networks -- are fighting for a U.S. revenue pool that, according to Boston-based research firm Celent Communications, totaled just $90 million last year.

与此同时，这些竞争对手必须掩盖他们的系统当前的算法和程序交易中的最新进展 - 卖方经纪人正在推动更积极地推动的创新，而他们的买方客户越来越集中控制其交易和相关成本。

“这是我所看到的最超级竞争的供应商解决方案市场，”伦敦投资管理咨询公司Citisoft的波士顿办公室达尼尔·哈林邦说。“这些公司一直在进行前所未有的投资，支持贸易业务经历的所有变化。公司是否能够跟上所有这些变化的问题是另一个问题。”

OMS提供商发现自己必须在更高级的功能中构建 - 超出基本订单输入和订单跟踪工具，以包括交易成本分析和其他计算功能 - 用于购买方面的预算受限的客户，这些客户没有太愿意提升他们的技术支出。10月份，当圣路易斯基地投资顾问肯尼迪资本管理时，用来自SanieGobased的indata一体地取代了调查软件OMS，决定是成本的。“indata为这笔钱提供了最全面的能力，”Kennedy Head Trader John Laux说。

“我们首先看效，然后定价，”金融信息交流（修订）经理Scott Atwell（Final）贸易和连接在美国世纪投资，密苏里州堪萨斯城的贸易和连通，为彭博组合订单管理系统选择了固定收入和Latentzero的股票Minerva。

If pricing pressure is so intense, how can these technology companies generate the added revenues they need for systems enhancements and upgrades? Merrin, who now runs New Yorkbased alternative trading system Liquidnet, worries that they can't. "To support OMS properly, a typical vendor needs a revenue base that's probably five times what it has."

Vendors say they are coping -- up to a point. Thomas Driscoll, vice president of sales and marketing at Charles River in Burlington, Massachusetts, points out that the current version of his firm's Investment Management System "has over 1,000 product enhancements, and our Version Eight [due this quarter] will have even more," such as improved settlement capabilities with the TradeWeb fixed-income market and the Omgeo posttrade-processing network. Still, Charles River wasn't able to do everything it had on the drawing board: It decided, for example, to delay some tax and portfolio optimization tools for later release.

The industry doesn't lack growth opportunities. Celent projects that annual OMS revenues will climb 87 percent, to $168 million, by 2007 -- though that's a tiny fraction of the $25 billion the U.S. securities industry spends each year on technology, out of a global total of more than $70 billion.

Citisoft's Houlihan estimates that about 2,000 U.S. asset managers have order management systems. That leaves some 7,000 yet to be sold on the idea. No one is counting on a rapid take-up, however; many firms are small and still prefer to use telephones and faxes rather than invest in OMS and other components of straight-through processing.

对冲基金更加逼真的近期前景，虽然很少有足够的可能性买家：据估计的7,000个基金中只有120个资产超过5亿美元，根据Massachusetts基本的研究公司TowerGroup。据软件公司总裁大卫奎南的主席David Quinlan的说法，EZE Castle位于波士顿（Sachs＆Co）的领先优质经纪公司，萨克斯＆Co.的领先优质经纪公司，是在这个细分市场的最高领域。除了其他法国坚定的leinata等，它正在受到挑战，其中达成协议与瑞银的主要经纪公司融入其LongView交易OMS;和旧金山的出现，这已经在9月份发布的最新版本的Moxy Oms，专门针对对冲基金。

Rather than wait for more institutions to come calling, OMS companies have begun working more closely with the sell side. Connectivity to brokerages has always been a critical piece of the OMS offering, and the vendors have taken that capability up a notch to accommodate algorithmic trading. For instance, LatentZero, which has dual headquarters in Boston and London and has sold its Minerva OMS to State Street Global Advisors and other top asset management firms, said in a corporate statement last month that its customers had access to nine leading algorithmic platforms, including those of Bank of America Securities, Citigroup, Credit Suisse First Boston and Goldman Sachs.

In some cases, moreover, OMS vendors are collecting revenues from the sell side to compensate for their additional work. It's a small but growing stream: Charles River, which like most of its competitors doesn't disclose earnings, says that fees from brokerages, such as connectivity charges, account for less than 5 percent of its revenue.

虽然任何增量收入应该对OMS行业的健康有益，但一些评论家警告说，如果供应商变得过于靠近或依赖销售方，他们的主要客户 - 资产管理人员 - 可能会缩短休克。

Celent analyst Denise Valentine sees the makings of an identity crisis for OMS providers. "Their desire to increase both market share and profitability may encourage vendors to drift away from their core competency," she says.

Liquidnet的Merrin同意谁的问题se interests the OMS developers are serving is a critical one, especially at a time when the relationship between the buy side and sell side is in a state of flux. "It gets dicey if you're forced to serve two masters," he asserts. "You have to figure out who the customer is and really focus on servicing that customer."

Daniel Watkins，Latentzero为北美的首席执行官承认，他的行业被拉在一个以上方向上。但是，他认为它是一个正常的演变，oms供应商和整个证券行业正在调整。“所有这一切都是在买卖方之间交易的变化面孔的一部分，”他说。

Even as LatentZero and its competitors work more closely with the sell side, Watkins says he is confident that "our [buy-side] clients will continue to exercise a very high degree of influence."

David Csiki，Indata头部，将软件提供给中小型投资管理公司的软件，并不是由更近的经纪领带困扰。他认为他们可以提高有时候令人挑衅的选区之间的合作水平。“在双面行业中，一项单面行业倡议并不是很成功，”他说，以修复消息传递协议为例，作为互利技术改进的一个例子。

Vendors are simply trying to adapt to a new OMS order by staking out a middle ground, albeit a shifting one.

“两位大师太强大了描述，”Rinedata Coo Jack Wiener争辩说。“在一天结束时，它仍然是购买侧公司的投资组合经理或商人，他们正在决定他们想要的OMS。我们需要一起工作[经销商]，以便我们的相互客户端获得最佳的工具做投资管理。“