Comment by pid-1

The terminal is also sort of an app platform for brokers and other firms to sell services to the buy side.

A few examples:

1. As a researcher, you can develop indexes and portfolios, then make those available to customers via bbg

2. Goldman has a service that let's you buy equities via SWAPs, if a fund can't hold said equities for regulatory or operational reasons. The whole service is a series of menus within the terminal.

3. Many brokers offer automatic trading services like "sell this notional but do it very slowly" etc etc... they do that via bbg