The CTRM Blog

It never ceases to amaze me how we continue to uncover CTRM vendors that we were previously unaware of. Yesterday, I had a conversation with Dr. Harri Toivonen, a Partner at a relatively small vendor called Kiodynos based in Finland. Its CTRM product is called Electrum which it claims “enables commodity market participants to effectively handle both their trading and risk management of commodity risk exposures within a single system.” A quick demonstration of the software soon established that this is a functionally-rich and broad footprint solution with an emphasis on risk management. But how? Where did Kiodynos come from and how did it develop a product like Electrum without CommodityPoint hearing of it?

The long awaited (at least by Patrick and I) edition 2 of Trends in Energy Trading, Transaction and Risk Management Software: A Primer> is now available from Amazon.com.

The book was kindly sponsored by RiskAdvisory, SunGard, SolArc, Sapient and VIZ Risk Management and is a radical overhaul and update to the original book which sold over 1600 copies. It is authored and edited by myself and Patrick Reames.

We have issued a new white paper titled ” The Commodity Risk Management Challenge”. It is available in the reports and articles section of this blog as a free download.

The white paper looks at the challenges around risk management faced by commodity traders particularly in physical commodity markets.

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting with Contigo in Solihull, England. Contigo is a relative newcomer to the CTRM software arena and they have a refreshing air of enthusiasm, innovation and dynamism to them which perhaps comes as much from the string of new license deals they have managed over the last few months as anything else.

Contigo was founded by a group of ex-E.On employees who have spent more or less their entire careers in and around energy trading systems. As a result, their approach is simply different using new technologies and innovative architectures and approaches to solve traditional problems. Their UK-based experience also tells in delivering UK and European software solutions. Contigo now has around 20 staff and several clients that include some household names.