The European Central Bank has gone to tender for a new real-time position-keeping/treasury management system.
Describing the contract as a "mission critical" purchase, the ECB is looking to develop a shortlist of five vendors capable of delivering an integrated, real-time position-keeping systsem spanning front, middle and back office and sub-ledger accounting functions with a view to go live in 2019.
The ECB's current TMS - which supports all the market operations linked to the ECB's own funds management, the decentralised management of the ECB foreign reserves and the various monetary policy asset purchase programmes - supports 501 users with an average of 150 concurrent users.
"As all current and future Eurosystem members shall have the option to use the same terms and conditions resulting from the procurement procedure, the potential number of licences could be in excess of 1,500," says the Bank in a procurement notice.
The duration of the contract is expected to run for eight years on a four-year renewal cycle.
Potential bidders are expected to employ at least 100 staff members and provide references from three current sites. The contract covers licensing, knowledge transfer, integration and data migration from current systems, and long-term maintenance.