The CTRM Blog

In an announcement issued yesterday, aspect Enterprise Solutions (AES) affirmed its movement from ETRM to CTRM. AES have extended its products coverage from just oil to include natural gas, marine fuels, biofuels, coal, emissions, metals, steel, agriculture and softs over the last 10-years according to the announcement. It also announced the appointment of Rob Hamilton as global sales director for metals trading and risk management. Hamilton was apparently previously with Brady PLC.

CommodityPoint will shortly issue a new free report on Non-Traditional Delivery Methods for CTRM Software and this article provides a snapshot of some of the findings of the study. The study was kindly sponsored by Aspect Enterprise, Allegro Development, IHS, OATI, Navita and SolArc. The full and complete report will be available for download on the UtiliPoint International website and CTRM Blog by the end of July.

Software as a Service, hosting and leasing are all alternative methods for delivery of CTRM software and they seem to be growing in popularity in many segments of the industry. Indeed, our study indicates that these delivery methods are already more widespread than at first we thought and are set to grow rapidly over the coming years.

Another vendor we recently ‘discovered’ is Constellation of Energy Solutions in Moscow. In fact, they emailed us and last week we got acquainted over the phone.

Constellation have developed an Energy Trading solution called Sozvezdie specifically targeting Russian power markets and generation and wholesale companies operating there. They also implement and support the product and provide consulting services to market participants. The company has grown since 2006 steadily and has around 30 clients and 40 staff. Its software, Sozvezdie, is now the main ETRM platform used in Russia with more than 60% of the market including 2 of the 3 foreign investors – E.On and ENEL. In fact, 27% of energy traded in Russian wholesale markets is processed with Sozvezdie.

Occasionally, CommodityPoint discovers new CTRM vendors that we had been unaware of. Just recently, we discovered CMStrade in Switzerland. In fact, CMS trade have been in the industry around 30-years and have had over 150 customers for its software in that time. Today, it has around 25 customers and less than 10 staff operating out of Lausanne. I spoke with Mr. K. Mizan-Bertola about the company and its products this week and even took a demonstration of the software.

Triple Point says that it signed 20 new license deals in Q2 2010 of which 50% were with new name customers helping the company to a 31% growth in revenues for the quarter and a 60% growth in EBITDA. Among the new licenses during the quarter, it has announced OGE Energy Resources, Prime East Shipping, Su-Raj Diamonds, Petredec, Louis Dreyfus Highbridge Energy, Incitec Pivot and CIMA Energy.