What looms as the next big market for financial services technology vendors? North America is creeping back to life as the recession ends, but the lure of BRIC remains powerful. Brazil, Russia, India and China in particular beckon to the likes of IBM, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard and others as areas percolating with business opportunities. Chief among the opportunities will be financial services, a bedrock service for large economies.

Here's how IBM CEO Sam Palmisano put its: "When a middle class emerges and you have a lot of money, like a China or an India, or portions of Eastern Europe, guess what you do? You add infrastructure. And that is called banks and wireless infrastructure and retail operations. And they consume, they buy goods. That creates lots of demand for the kinds of things we do." According to ZDNet, IBM opened up a research facility in India 12 years ago, presaging the rise of the financial services IT powerhouse. It just opened another research center in Brazil.

The top firms all have different ideas. "Lenovo is looking to replicate its China success in other young markets, but the focus is solely on selling hardware. IBM is looking to create a virtuous cycle between research, services and innovations that can scale. Cisco sees Russia as an incubator for innovation and internal startups." We'll see how this affects their offerings and price points domestically. Some facilities may also be used for outsourced work.

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