The CTRM Blog

Ascend Analytics discussed their 2011 results recently, noting that the company enjoyed a record year of “30% growth”, seeing increases in both revenues and new client signings on a year over year basis. According to Gary Dorris, Ascend’s CEO, the fourth quarter was particularly strong, with the signing of several very large clients including PPL EnergyPlus, Sempra Generation, Riverside Public Utilities and Tacoma Power.

Interestingly, the company noted that their flagship solution, PowerSimm, has been enhanced to perform “one million simulations per calendar year in 10 minutes”, a benchmark that enables multiple runs of intra-day market simulations. This capability, as the company notes in their press release, is one that is in growing demand by asset-heavy power market participants and it should position the company well for increased opportunity in that segment.

According to a just issued press release from Allegro, the company saw a greater than 60% year-over-year growth in software license revenues, with a 50% year-over-year increase in new customer signings from 2010 to 2011. The press release names several of those new clients including Saudi Aramco, Capital Power, PAA Natural Gas Storage, EPIC Aviation and Green Plains. Geographically, they note success in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific; with new sales covering crude and crude products, energy utilities, chemicals and minerals.

In this video, recorded in Essen Germany, we sat down with David Calmonson of Contigo to discuss the company’s growth in 2011. David also discusses Contigo’s efforts in expanding their product capabilities and also their geographic reach to areas outside of the UK and Europe.

Though E-World organizers say attendance this year will exceed 20,000 delegates, for whatever reason, the event seems somewhat less chaotic then last year. Many of the large CTRM vendors have booths again this year, including both the European based, such as Navita, and the US based, including Triple Point, Allegro, SunGard Energy and Commodities and Open Link (with their EUR subsidiary IRM), and traffic appears to be good, if not overwhelming.

I’m in Essen Germany today attending the E-World event and the big story that emerged this morning is Brady’s just announced acquisition of Navita and apparent but unnounced (as of this writing) acquisition of Syseca.

While the details are still emerging, this is clearly a significant market move by Brady and one that greatly strengthens their postion in energy CTRM.  We’ll be speaking with Gavin Lavelle, CEO of Brady later in the day and will bring additional details as they become available.