ION Openlink Endur – An Update post version s25
I recently spoke with Phil Wang and David Gross who head up product management at ION for its Openlink product, about its Openlink product – Endur. ION’s Openlink Endur has a very large installed base globally and has been around for many years. It released version S25 in January. Market demand for the product is still strong, they told me, and sales continue to be good with consistent growth in new customers and revenues over the last five years. This growth has occurred across all primary markets – oil, bulk, power, gas etc., as well as carbon, and even into ags and precious metals. The last 12-24 months had seen a lot of interest from traditional fossil fuel sectors as well as clients that have the need to integrate renewable commodity business and see the benefit of managing the combined business in a single solution, they said.
The Openlink product is a high-end solution that particularly suits tier one and upper tier two businesses that have complex requirements, trade multiple commodities and require strong risk management. “It’s very flexible and customizable,” they told me. “Very few clients use it out of the box without any customization.” This means that most clients manage their own upgrade schedule as control over things like adequate testing is obviously seen as critical. It is this configurability, breadth and depth of functionality and long history in the industry that, in our view, keeps interest in the product strong. These days, the Openlink product can be acquired on a subscription basis and in the cloud as an ION-hosted single tenanted solution on Azure or AWS.
The level of customization and flexibility offered by a solution like Endur can mean that users get trapped on an older version of the software as they are reluctant to upgrade. ION offers support, however, for up to 4-years, and even beyond, via an extended support agreement, they said. However, very aware of this sort of issue, ION has invested heavily in software quality. “Upgrade times have come down as quality has improved,” they said. “Upgrade times can now be measured in weeks – unheard of in the past – and so it is easier for clients to stay on the latest version.” It already had customers who had successfully upgraded to its latest version.
ION has made a huge investment in software quality. That included investing in automated regression testing, third-party tools, more standards and a transition to a more agile methodology ten years ago. It has also rolled out a Beta testing program to allow early testing, identify any issues earlier and allow users to explore new functionality. These have all contributed to reduced upgrade times and costs and that in turn has meant that users are happier to perform upgrades in a timely manner.
The biggest challenge facing ION and Openlink is ensuring that in adopting new technologies like AI, it has all its bases covered, they told me. “We are looking at AI to improve efficiency but that brings challenges too around areas like governance, security and IP protection. This is a dilemma as we want to deliver the promise of such new technology rapidly.” Other challenges include market changes and the proliferation of data – like European power markets, for example. So, data management, AI and connectivity remain areas of investment for ION. “One advantage ION has is that it is a large organization with resources and so we can benefit from AI research going on in other parts of the business.” Indeed, ION has already rolled out several ML-based AI improvements around things like optimization, forecasting, and reconciliation, for example, they said.
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