The data geeks are taking over Wall Street

There have historically been two dominant tribes on Wall Street.

There's the sellside, the investment banks, which as their name suggests mostly sell stuff. There's also the buyside, the fund managers, which as their name suggests mostly buy stuff.

A third group, including stock exchanges, trading platforms, clearing houses and data providers, help facilitate transactions between the two dominant groups.

They're sometimes called the "pipes and plumbing of global finance." If you needed a reminder, pipes and plumbing aren't sexy, and neither was this third group.

That's beginning to change.

McKinsey is out with a big report on what it calls Capital Markets Infrastructure Providers (CMIP), and it's clear that stock exchanges and market infrastructure firms are poised to make up a bigger chunk of the financial services pie.

"This an industry that, it's importance to the capital markets ecosystem, beyond purely facilitating transactions, is growing," Rush Kapashi, a partner at McKinsey, told Business Insider.

• Exchange groups in particular are diversifying, setting up businesses in just about every area of the capital markets value chain.
• Information is becoming a key battleground.
• CMIPs are forecast to deliver 5% annual revenue growth through 2020, outpacing revenue growth at sellside and buyside companies.

Here's some data: