Stamford, Conn., July 28, 2008 – MEGA, a major enterprise architecture (EA), business process analysis(BPA), and governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) solutions provider, has been positioned in the visionaries quadrant in two Gartner, Inc. reports: “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Governance, Risk and Compliance Platforms” and “Magic Quadrant for Operational Risk Management Software for Financial Services”.

Vendors are positioned in Gartner Magic Quadrant reports in one of four categories: niche players, challengers, leaders, and visionaries.

“We believe being placed in the visionaries quadrant in two important Gartner reports validates the efforts we have made to develop robust, high performance, flexible solutions for GRC and operational risk management,” explained Lucio de Risi, president and CEO of MEGA International. “In general, visionaries are known to be farsighted and innovative: we will continue to invest in providing original and creative software that will help our customers achieve their business goals.”

 

Governance Risk and Compliance Management (GRCM)

“GRCM is defined as the automation of the management, measurement, remediation, and reporting of controls and risks against objectives, and in accordance with rules, regulations, standards and policies,” according to the June 30, 2008 report on GRCM.

“The market for enterprise governance, risk, and compliance platforms is evolving from a focus on regulatory compliance to include risk management, audit management and policy management. It is dominated by best-of-breed vendors,” the report continued.

Gartner placed companies in the GRC Magic Quadrant if they had the ability to offer solutions in three of four management areas (audit, compliance, risk, and policy) and had a minimum of $7.5 million in annual revenue from sales of their GRC product and at least 50 customers.

The MEGA GRC Suite provides flexible solutions for all four key areas covered in the report (audit, compliance, risk, and policy management). It seamlessly integrates GRC with BPA to map business processes within the organization against risks and controls, facilitating process and performance improvements, and offers comprehensive audit planning features. The software is unique in its recognition of the overlap in audit, risk, and control activities; it provides a common platform through a global repository to centralize and coordinate all data relating to these areas in a single searchable environment that can be shared between departments, divisions, work groups, or committees.

 

Operational Risk Management (ORM)

“The use of ORM software by financial services firms requires capabilities beyond generic audit, control and compliance applications. In addition to qualitative self assessment capabilities, leading institutions are seeking solutions that support quantitative, performance-based models,” the June 6, 2008 report on ORM noted.

“Operational risk is an all-inclusive term that covers front-office (for example, customer and supplier-facing) processes, as well as back-office activities. Exposure to operational risk is inherent in all business processes and IT operations,” the report said. “Operational risk relates to the uncertainty of daily tactical business activities and risk events resulting from inadequate or failed internal processes, people or systems, or from external events.”

Gartner placed companies like MEGA in the ORM Magic Quadrant only if their products demonstrated:

• “Enterprise reach (as opposed to just departmental or line-of-business capabilities)
• Risk management, escalation and alerting functionality for early warnings and loss events
• Broad spectrum reporting (including, for example, loss events) for senior managers, boards of directors and auditors, as well as bank examiners
• Capability for business process identification, mapping and evaluation
• Risk policy definition and controls, including organizational framework

• Audit and certification

• Assessment and integration of qualitative and quantitative metrics and management controls
• Capital calculation functionality, including statistical and scenario analysis, stress testing, and simulation
• Risk and performance data/indicator monitoring, assessment, and integration
• Data management functionality that incorporates or allows for the integration of a risk data repository, risk metadata library, performance data repository, risk rule engine, tools to extract, transform and load (ETL) data and multitype loss data collection, storage, and retrieval functions"

The MEGA GRC Suite supports advanced measurement for ORM, with a risk framework that includes Basel II and Sarbanes Oxley preloaded libraries. With the company’s pioneering foundation in business process analysis, the MEGA GRC Suite supports business process mapping to provide a unique level of visibility into enterprise organization and processes, operational risks and controls. In addition, product features include risk and control self assessment, loss data collection, and Key Risk Indicator (KRI) capabilities, as well as a calculation engine, scenario analysis, quantitative analytics, and Bayesian integration.

The company’s 17 year-history of strong professional services and consulting experience provide customers with expert advice in GRC, ORM, and EA.

 

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*Caldwell, French and Eid, Tom, Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Governance, Risk and Compliance Platforms, June 30, 2008. McKibben, Douglas and Furlonger, David, Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Operational Risk Management Software for Financial Services, June 6, 2008.

The Magic Quadrants are copyrighted 2008 by Gartner, Inc. and are reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.