The CTRM Blog

It’s no secret that instant message (IM) systems have become one of the three primary communication channels for energy traders, along side the phone and online exchanges such as ICE.  Despite it’s popularity in energy trading, up until now it has been much like the phone – while the conversation could be recorded, its unstructured nature has made it difficult and impractical to try to programatically capture the conversation and reduce its relevant elements down to a set of data that could be automatically passed to a trading system, such as an ETRM or CTRM application.  The issue has been around understanding the semantics of the deal – what do the words on the screen, typos and all, mean?  As humans, we’re pretty adept at translating slang, shorthand, or mistyped words into meaningful concepts …software and computers, not so much.

Despite my somewhat optimistic early review in this blog, the Kindle Fire has, to me, become that once promising relationship that has turned sour and ugly.  Though I’ve tried to tell myself otherwise, the reality is that it was never all that promising to begin with.  But, like a relationship in which you’ve invested a bit of time and emotion initiating (as you might pursue an attractive girl), in your heart you want to believe it will turn out better than your brain tells you its going to, even after a first date filled with inane chit-chat in which your new companion’s only response to your side of the conversation is “huh?”.  Yep, that’s the Kindle Fire to me, the semi-attractive girl that just isn’t very smart and doesn’t possess the intuition to understand what it is you’re looking for.

I recently spent some time with Kevin Gerold, who heads up Paragon Consulting, in order to get an update on the company’s activities.  As readers may know, Paragon’s credit risk solution, Vanguard,  was launched in early 2009 and found early and solid success in the ETRM markets; and according to Kevin, is continuing to land significant new customers.

Word on the street is that the OLF acquisition of Solarc has now closed…

UPDATE:

New York – December 01, 2011 – OpenLink Financial, LLC (OpenLink), a leading provider of energy, commodities, trading, and risk management (E/CTRM) solutions, which support the entire transaction lifecycle, has completed the deal to acquire SolArc, a vanguard in commodity management solutions for companies operating across the commodity supply chain, with a particular strength in physical bulk commodities.