Technology tools

Portfolio management tools have been around for several years, so they are fairly mature from a functionality standpoint, said Dennis Gaughan, research director at AMR Research.

"There are different capabilities within portfolio management," Gaughan said. "Each vendor has strengths and weaknesses. But what you'll find is overall they do a pretty good job."

There are still areas of differentiation among vendors, he said. For instance, ProSight focuses on high-level portfolio management and provides government-specific applications to help agencies complete their Exhibit 300 forms during the annual budget process.

But Artemis approaches portfolio management from an investment planning and control perspective that can be applied to different portfolios in an organization.

In a recent report, Gaughan reviewed 14 vendors that sell portfolio management software geared toward information technology. Some of the high scorers include Mercury Interactive, which Gaughan tapped as the market leader, Artemis, Niku, Changepoint, PlanView, Primavera, Business Engine, ProSight, Pacific Edge and Systemcorp.

Users can soon expect to see more consolidation as smaller portfolio management firms get snapped up, Gaughan said. The market is also getting squeezed by enterprise resource planning vendors on one side and IT-focused infrastructure companies on the other, he said. "Only a few pure-play vendors will survive," he said.