Partnerships, Collaboration And CTRM
In recent weeks a number of new partnerships and collaborations have been informally announced via vendor blogs and social media.
Recently, CTRM Cubed announced its partnership with Enegen and Equias. CTRM Cubed has dubbed its partnering program its CTRM ecosystem partners and has promoted the concept of an ‘app store‘ since inception. In turn, Enegen works extensively with its own partner network where its ATOM application connects to ETRM systems, control systems, market prices and industry flows, allowing CTRM Cubed to be a part of a larger ecosystem that includes Enegen’s Genstar4 as well. Similarly with Equias, CTRM Cubed’s TradeCube supports simple, automated, straight-through electronic confirmation matching, regulatory reporting, and settlement matching via the Equias electronic Back Office.
Meanwhile, Agiboo announced a partnership with Tradesparent recently as well. “Tradesparent is a Software and Data Engineering company providing a data consolidation and service platform for risk & performance management, planning & analytical processes. It arises from a need for transparency in organizations actively trading and processing commodities. Through an integrated data solution, it aspires for companies to unlock the full potential of their data by bringing simplicity, consistency and transparency to daily financial and physical operations. They do so most notably in the Food & Agri trading and processing industry. The compatibility between the Agiboo and Tradesparent was therefore obvious from the getgo. It is also perfectly complementary – Agiboo is very strong in CT, whereas Tradesparent offers advanced risk management (RM) tools way beyond the scope of Agiblocks, among other benefits,” says a blog article on Agiboo’s website.
In fact, in the newly emerging world of CTRM ecosystems in the cloud, ComTech anticipates these sort of relationships to be a normal aspect of CTRM going forward. Other vendors like Previse Systems, Gen10, Igloo and so on are developing an ecosystem approach and an ‘app store’-type model in which users can piece together solutions from different vendors that will work from the get go together. Even SAP is working in a similar vein having announced its own Industry Cloud initiative. As stated in that article, “the interesting thing about the industry cloud initiative for me is that partners will be able to contribute to forming essentially an app store and ecosystem of cloud microservices solutions. Not only that but these will be delivered with APIs and headless UX meaning that users can build their own interface or incorporate them into existing suites as they see fit. SAP users will be able to deploy ecosystems of services in the cloud that focus on data and analytics and utilize AI and ML.”
Of course, CTRM vendors have been offering hooks into the broader ecosystem for some time via API’s to trading venues (Trayport, ICE, EPEX, Nord Pool and so on) as well as third-party back office type services like those offered by Equias. But this is a bit different in that smaller SaaS vendors appear content to focus on a piece of the puzzle and work with other vendors via API’s to provide other aspects of the requirements. The move towards real co-opetition via app stores and ecosystem partners potentially offers users an enhanced ability to go best of breed as opposed to single supplier. However, there are also those who will continue to favor the single supplier approach believing it to offer a less complicated approach.
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