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Portware
H
aving been acquired by FactSet four years ago,
Portware has been another entrant that has
dipped in and out of the EMS survey in recent years.
FactSet has spent much of this time pioneering the
idealistic synergy and integration between EMS and
OMS, although the appetite for such a combined
offering seems to fluctuate drastically among buy-
side users depending on their trading strategies and
operational resources. The vendor failed to attract
enough responses in last year’s EMS survey to warrant
a profile but received an impressive 160% increase in
response numbers for this year’s edition.
Portware was the standout performer in this year’s
EMS survey, which will be hugely welcome news
to FactSet, given its underwhelming showing in last
year’s edition. It received the highest average score of
all profiled providers with 6.35, far above the survey
average of 5.78, and a massive year-on-year increase of
1.13 compared to last year. With a score of 7.0 repre-
senting the highest possible achievable, to record an
average of 6.35 is an outstanding testament to the work
FactSet have done to improve the product.
The vendor received a score of over 6.0 in all but
one of the functional performance areas under review
– the one exception being the product development
category, which scored 5.99 – and achieved the
highest score of all profiled providers in six of the 13
categories reviewed by buy-side survey respondents.
Portware also came close to achieving perfect scores in
several areas, namely for its reliability and availability
(6.88), client service personnel (6.61), FIX capabilities
(6.74) and breadth of direct connections to venues
(6.58).
The most noticeable year-on-year score increases
were in the reliability and availability (+1.40), client
service personnel (+1.82), ease of use (+1.60), handling
of new versions/releases (+1.56) and product devel-
opment (+1.78). The overall picture for the Portware
EMS is one of vast improvement, particularly around
product enhancements, consistency and service. The
challenge for Factset now is to repeat this performance
in next year’s EMS survey, a feat much easier said than
done considering the ongoing consolidation and shift-
ing priorities of the asset management community.
PORTWARE RATINGS FOR EMS PERFORMANCE
Reliability and
Availability Latency Client Service
Personnel Ease-of-
Use Handling of New
Versions/Releases Breadth of Broker
Algorithms Timeliness of Updates
for Broker Changes FIX Capabilities
6.88 6.34 6.61 6.08 6.02 6.45 6.22 6.74
Breadth of Asset Class
Coverage Breadth of Direct
Connections to Venues Product
Development Ease of Integration to
Internal Systems Overall Cost of Operation Average score
6.31 6.58 5.99 6.12 6.24 6.35
KEY STATS
+1.82 6.88 5.99 69%
Best year-on-year score
(Client service
personnel) Highest score
(Reliability and
availability) Lowest score
(Product
development) Most important EMS
feature: Breadth of
asset class coverage
90 // TheTrade // Fall 2019