GMSL – A Dominant Vendor and Service Provider in European Gas & Power Markets
GMSL got started in 1996, was acquired by Fluxys SA in 2002 and has grown into a sizeable entity offering 24 by 7 services and software to the European Power & Gas markets. With more than 115 staff around half of whom work in the 24/7 operational services area, GMSL has more than 90 operational clients and over 100 licensees of its software. Recently, I was provided with an introduction and update by commercial manager, Lucy Savage, and her colleague, Paul Simpson.
Operational outsourcing services is an area that ComTech has noted as one of growth in recent years – not just in areas like dispatch, scheduling and balancing but also in areas like trading. Increasingly, energy companies in Europe are likely to focus on what they may consider strategic aspects of their business and outsource other parts of their operations either on a 24/7 basis or for out of hours. GMSL is a pioneer in that regard offering a variety of operational services ‘on behalf of’ for clients based on its own software solutions that it also licenses commercially. “We provide high quality software and also use that software ourselves so there is a strong and immediate feedback loop internally,” said Paul Simpson. “We keep everything up to date and continually invest in our technology and as we use the software ourselves, we feel we have an advantage over competitors in the software market.”
In providing operational services, security is key and GMSL ‘s software is fully mirrored at a backup site that utilizes a different power supply and power generator, they told me. They also have 24 by 7 support on the IT and cloud engineering side to ensure resilience. Additionally, it has a strong B2B coms solution and send/receives over 20 million messages a year on that infrastructure being connected to over 170 partners in power and gas in Europe. “It’s robust, reliable and tried and tested,” they said.
On the gas side, it offers its Chorus solution – a SaaS cloud-based product based on AWS as its gas nominations solution. “GMSL has been developing software for 25-years and Chorus, our newest solution, has been in development for the last 5-years,” Lucy said. “The latest version was in development for 5-years and is now in use by ourselves and clients.” User configuration is kept to a minimum and they described it as highly automated with relatively simple set up. “It is a quick and easy way to set up for markets and start trading.” A second gas solution is EuroRunner, which is a gas portfolio management solution that allows customers to manager their gas portfolios across Europe. “Customers manage things like their trades, transits, storage, LNG, production and end users.” On the power side, the solution is called Powertrak, a SaaS and modular solution that supports over 20 system operators of European power markets and a roadmap for this year that will add five more.
In terms of coverage, it is comprehensive on the gas side with almost all European gas markets supported. It is a little less comprehensive on the power side, but GMSL is keen to always work with customers and prospects to add markets for both gas and power. It is also looking at other areas where there may be opportunities like hydrogen and intraday power markets, they told me.
GMSL operates in the scheduling, dispatch, and nominations space in Europe for gas and power where there is significantly less competition than there is for say ETRM or even risk management software. They tell me that the power side is a tad more completive than gas and it’s just a handful of solutions available on the market for software solutions and fewer still for operational services. Vendors like EnergyOne, Brady Technologies, Volue and others are its primary competitors however, with its longevity, industry ownership and proven track record, GMSL is very well known in the space and aims to remain so.
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