Sounds pretty good. But what the heck does this really mean? Forrester defines global power sellers as those boasting “more than 35 new banking platform clients in at least six regions of the world in 2008.” Randomness aside, Oracle was one of the lucky few (actually one of two) out of 17 vendors of globally deployed banking platforms surveyed for the report to meet this criterion. They scored 62 total deals with new clients, 20 more than the nearest competitor, Temenos, according to Forrester’s Global Banking Deals: Setting the Stage In a Maturing Market.

The report cites Oracle as a top-tier financial services vendor based on report evaluation criteria including banking platform functionality and banking-specific functionality, which only involved new deals signed in 2008 with named customers. Interesting to note, SunGard is making a splash by moving into the group of challengers that includes Infosys Technologies, SAP, Tata Consultancy Services Financial Solutions, and Nucleus Software.

Financial services firms all over the world are looking to renew their application landscapes. The report concluded that in many cases, antiquated application dinosaurs prevent delivering sufficiently flexible business solutions at a reasonable cost — within an acceptable timeframe and with sound quality. Both banks and other financial firms now have to decide whether to build, buy, or pursue a combination of the two. Forrester says the most common banking platform renewal scenarios range from homegrown or “best-of-breed environments” to mainly off-the-shelf applications.

Interest in banking platforms is likely to rise, Forrester says, because there’s a need to build a banking platform after a complex merger or acquisition or the need to consolidate operational costs for a bank’s international subsidiaries.

Bottom line

But the bottom line, Forrester reports, is that in spite of having very visible global players, banking platform selection has become more difficult as the market consolidation, which is being accelerated by the ongoing crisis, makes vendor scrutiny even more crucial.