What’s new at FIS?
Recently, I spoke with Harshad Kolpyakwar, Head of Product Management for Energy at FIS, who shared some interesting updates regarding the ongoing technical improvements in installation and upgrade processes, as well as other developments.
The installation of the FIS Energy Trading, Risk, and Logistics platform, which used to be a lengthy and cumbersome process in the past, can now be completed in just a few days. In fact, technical upgrades can be done in mere minutes. These improvements constitute significant progress, Harshad reported.” In particular, we leverage the FIS Universal Framework “UDF” which allow the creation of all the necessary Azure Infrastructure in an automated way, followed by a “Deployment As Code” which not only makes the deployment of software more automated but also helps with the tracking of all configurations which end up operational benefit.” – Harshad said. Furthermore, FIS continues to promote cloud deployments and now offer customers a Migration path from Oracle to Postgres which helps to bring customers into the latest technology offerings at a very competitive price, he added.
Harshad was proud to report, that in 2024 Gen AI has become part of the day to day work at FIS. The energy team is currently utilizing it for Development Productivity and augmenting the Product Offering by integrating with Azure Power BI. Another reported achievement is a successful POC for the multitenancy which would help FIS address wider audience, particularly customers who prioritize cost-efficiency and ease of use.
Additionally, FIS has shifted to a twice-yearly release schedule, introducing one minor and one major release each year. The minor release focuses on bug fixes and small functional enhancements, while the major release includes a full technological upgrade. This new cadence allows customers to receive new features more quickly and reduces the need for extensive testing when applying the minor release updates. In parallel FIS continues HTML5 migration and performance improvements, particularly in reports, batches and real time calculation engine.
Certainly, the team is working also on functional enhancement. For example, the one of the upcoming key functional enhancements is improved support for meter data and volume forecasts, which is especially valuable for PPA deals and renewable asset management.
ComTech has highlighted in numerous publications that the market is increasingly shifting towards flexible ETRM solutions with superior user experiences and cloud-native architecture. As a result, newer ETRM platforms built from scratch are becoming more appealing to customers compared to traditional monolithic systems, despite offering fewer out-of-the-box features. In this context, FIS stands out as one of the few solutions that has chosen a strategy of gradual transition from legacy to cloud-native architecture, without sacrificing functionality. The company has consistently pursued this approach year after year, making significant progress, as Harshad confirmed: “We are optimistic about FIS’s positioning in the ETRM vendor market,” he stated.
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