Buy-Side Technology Awards: Best Buy-Side Data Management Product─Markit EDM

Cadis is a special animal: Launched in the wake of an acrimonious and protracted boardroom split at Citadel Associates back in late 2007, the offspring company renamed itself Cadis after its flagship enterprise data management (EDM) offering, Cadis EDM. Under the leadership of CEO Dan Simpson, chairman Peter Little and head of sales Stuart Plane, the vendor reassured its steadily growing buy-side client base that it was there for the long haul. The Cadis management clearly did something right─the choppy waters it had just negotiated signaled the start of an upward trajectory in terms of client wins that most other firms can only dream about. This success is reflected in Cadis' blemish-free Buy-Side Technology Awards track record, accounting for the best buy-side data management product every year since the awards began back in 2007.

Add to that the firm's unparalleled distinction of never having lost an existing client, its levels of service bordering on the fanatical, and the success of its proof-of-concept "try-before- you-buy" strategy that it unveiled five years ago, a strategy large numbers of technology vendors in this space have now adopted, and you realize that the firm's success is down to anything but luck.

Anyone who has covered the financial services technology vendor space for any appreciable amount of time will know that mergers and acquisitions can just as easily turn out disastrously as they can successfully, although the nine-month post-merger period has proven to be a happy one, now that the Cadis staff are fully ensconced in Markit's London offices and the Cadis moniker has been jettisoned for Markit Enterprise Data Management.