Core treasury functionality is mature. Providers of treasury workstations are surviving, but innovation is occurring at the margins and in the delivery channel. ASP hosting never turned into the down-market sales bonanza some predicted. Consolidation among vendors continues. When demand for new functionality crops up, niche players often get there first. They could be eating the core systems providers' lunches, except that the core providers are inviting niche players to lunch and forming the partnerships and interoperability arrangements that both need to increase sales. Banks are finding new roles, more often as conduits of technology than as inventors.

Sales of treasury workstations seem to be good but not great. Paul Bramwell, senior vice president for treasury solutions at SunGard AvantGard, insists that his company is enjoying growth in both clients and revenue. “It's pretty buoyant,” he says. “The price of software is falling, but we see offsetting revenue growth from peripheral services like our SWIFT service bureau; corporate-to-bank connectivity services like our Echos and eBAM products; and through the increased demand for our hosting services.”

But Bramwell concedes that the “enormous profits that would attract new players” are missing. “It is a good market but not a hot market with massive growth.” Hence there's been a continuing wave of consolidation as surviving players buy up smaller firms to build market share and operational scale.