Episode 4 - ETRM Mini-Series with CTRMCloud

Chris Sass and Martin Hiller (Hosts of the ETRM Mini-Series) are talking to Sulhi Akmehmet (Chief Executive Officer) of CTRMCloud.

"CTRMCloud is transforming the energy and commodity trading landscape by simplifying once-complex trading and risk management software. By offering CTRM-as-a-Service,  CTRMCloud offers a subscription-based model with a cloud-native solution that is quickly and efficiently deployed, equipping organizations with real-time decision support and intraday reporting across the entire commodity value chain. Cloud-native, customizable and extensible, it offers unmatched computation power at a fraction of the usual cost. CTRMCloud was established in 2016, with presence in San Francisco, New York, Paris and London."


To get more insights about all the vendors that participated in the ETRM Mini-Series, check out https://insidersguidetoenergy.com/energy-podcast-education/etrm/

If you want to find out more about CTRMCloud, click https://insidersguidetoenergy.com/energy-podcast-education/etrm/ctrmcloud/

Transcript

 | Timestamp | Speaker | Transcript

 | 00:52.69 | chrissass | Welcome to insiders guide to energy ETRM miniseries today's episode is with CTRMCloud today I have Sulhi Akmehmet with me so he welcome to the program.
| 01:04.18 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Or ah pleasure being on your show pleasure meeting you guys. No not at all. No I know it's all good suhi a memet.
| 01:09.10 | chrissass | And I apologize that I may have murdered your name because you had a big smile when I tried to say it So How do you pronounce your name. Just let's get the audience to know how we pronounce it properly. Thank you All right? And so let's start off by a little bit of who you are in. Crem Cloud who is that.
| 01:27.28 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Oh yeah, ctm cloud is a new um, relatively new player in the trmc trm space. We started about 5 years ago we are a um, an experienced group of energy and commodity industry veterans. Alongside with a group of technology professionals who have you know a lot of expertise experience and in building. Um, you know trading and risk management software in their past lives
| 01:58.45 | chrissass | Okay, so so your 5 year old company where you headquartered.
| 02:02.75 | Sulhi Akmehmet | We are quite distributed I myself am am in San francisco the bulk of the technology team is here in San francisco but we have people in the us we have in North america we have Houston new york. And we have people in europe we have people in in paris and london.
| 02:20.21 | chrissass | Ah, fantastic, all right? And so what I like to start the segments out with is the whole reason we're doing this eter I mini seriesies is there's a premise of mine that that the etm space is a crowded space today that there's change coming. Um. And you you talked about being a five year old company. So I would count you into that change coming. So maybe you can help our audience from a perspective of what do you see is happening the industry and our changes coming is is there something different taking place today.
| 02:51.65 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Um, yeah, so let me try to kind of answer that in in 2 pieces. 1 is the energy trading. Um the energy industry itself is changing because you know people used it. I've seen in 1 ah, 1 of these conferences that the 3 ds of the energy industry the decentralization decarbonization and digitization I mean digitization is I guess old news and decarbonization is something that started but now I think it's really picked up steam I mean the. You know, a lot of people think that it's the the international organizations or the governments that actually have to drive that but not really a lot of most of the carbon trading is voluntary carbon trading. So the world economy and the individual companies are actually pushing that forward and that momentum is going to really shift the industry into a. You know more and more de carbonization and there's going to be lots of changes that come with that. Um, you know the renewable assets and how they trade and and the particular um unique characteristics of of renewable assets like such as you know the intermittency and more balancing needs. Lots of short term trading. Um you hear a lot about algo trading these days more than you used to? Um, so all of that stuff is happening and then we see you know the covid the covid pandemic really kind of was ah was a wake up call as well to kind of have us understand. What can happen a supply chain and the whole trading and risk management. how how how that can affect the industry in that way. Um, so along with all of those changes on the etm ctrm space. You got the kind of the legacy vendors. They have large client bases and and very very complete product. But it's it's based on 2030 year old technology so things are not really ideal and then you have a lot of newcomers and and 1 1 unique thing about the ctr metrm um, space may be different from other. Um. B 2 b spaces that there's you kind of have to figure out your niche. You can't be saying I'm going to do oh I'm going to do oil and ags at the same time and and be the best in in both, you kind of have to pick that and and then there's lots of regional differences. So each etrm cterm firm has kind of. Picked a niche on that front but also kind of technology approach I mean are they cloud is everybody says cloud but not everything's ah the same kind of cloud. Some people are kind of pushing more into a software as a service model.
| 05:41.23 | Sulhi Akmehmet | And some some companies are thinking and this includes the legacy vendors. Um, you know we're going to host it on the Cloud. So we're going to save people from the hardware cost and the hardware management cost but in terms of the system architecture and how it serves the client's needs. It's it's pretty much like an on-prem system. It's just. Hosted on the Cloud. So those are kind of the highlights I see.
| 06:03.49 | chrissass | Okay, so so you've been doing this 5 years so have you seen more recently changes since you started the company I mean you've talked about Covid. So obviously that's only a couple years old so that that 1 probably has been a change but are are there things your customers are asking you now that that. That when you first started the custom company that they weren't asking for.
| 06:25.10 | Sulhi Akmehmet | So on the Cloud side I think people have a morph an appreciation I mean I have to do less talking when I talk about software as a service and I I say you know there's cloud hosted versus software as a service as kind of maybe 2 ends up the spectrum. Ah. More people actually understand that and appreciate that that's on the technology front and on on kind of industry trends I've definitely seen a lot more clients talking to us about renewables and emissions and and in general carbon trading. Um, there's definitely that I think that's kind of picked up its momentum I mean depends on how you how you measure that but in the last couple of years. There's there's more and more of that and we see more companies coming to us and asking us for for that kind of functionality.
| 07:23.00 | Martin | That's actually a very interesting Topic. So functionality around renewables and electrification I mean this is definitely something that the industry is driving I think also business models are partially changing if you look at some plays in the market I mean not not the vendors but the. Power produces. Um and they need also new tools and new functionality in my point of view to cope with those new challenges that come with renewables thinking of ah Ge Os or ppas and their whole. Lifecycle looks different or at least more complex So I'm wondering what? what? The Ctm Cloud is is is offering especially to to your clients in terms of renewables and how you help them? Um. Coping with those new developments and complexity.
| 08:16.86 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Yeah, you mentioned ppas which is interesting because you know you got the 20 year you know typical ppa fifteen ten twenty maybe longer ppas and it's kind of like an investment vehicle right? So there's all this investment that that's going to go into. Renewable generation assets and somebody has to bankroll that um, and then you know you have these ppa structures and now you got the virtual ppas where if you can kind of take multiple investments and and and kind of almost like build a pool out of it. So that's only the I would say like kind of long term and we have clients. Um, who are in the kind of the retail space and just like companies have to have industrial commercial industrial companies have to kind of prove their greenness. Um, ah to the world. The. On the energy retail side. You got the same same kind of drive. You know can we be 80 percent green ninety percent green can we be in five years one hundred percent green. So a lot of lot of utilities energy retailers are actually investing in that so we have some clients who who have a lot of ppas and. And it's got its own nuances and the kind of the dynamicness of it the the constantly changing forecast and and the structural nature of the of the products on the flip side. We also see and this is this comes more in kind of pure financial players almost like spec trading. Um, where people are kind of trying to make money off of the short-term nature of things because the the renewables are definitely pushing the boundaries on kind of forecasting and and and the balancing and the intermittency all of that is brought into the system. We um. And that that needs to that needs to enable the system needs to basically enable those companies to to be connected so we haven't in the in the us it's kind of a more complicated ecosystem. We've got you know a whole bunch of ah tsos that you have to individually connect to. And europe it's different and now we see liberalization in Japan. So maybe there's gonna be things in there. There's gonna be more um you know electricity trading in Japan. So lots of things happening on on both ends of the spectrum.
| 10:42.48 | Martin | so yeah so I heard you saying if if I can summarize it that the renewables and the demand or desire to get greener has a strong impact on the long-term trading which is more represented by. Ppas and also other complex structures but also and especially on the short-term trading as well. I guess that's clearly visible when you have yeah wind park and it blows or there's high wind and then you need to cope with that in your daily. Short -ten trading activity. So I completely agree but I also heard to say ah heard you saying that lots of your clients have ppas and if I now gap the bridge to what you said at the very beginning that as a smaller company. You need to have your niche where you are good in it because you cannot cover.
| 11:30.90 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Are.
| 11:32.54 | Martin | All aspects as the legacy vendors I'm wondering is is then Renewables ppas and all that comes with it your usp or your strength as as Ctm Cloud or what is your niche.
| 11:44.21 | Sulhi Akmehmet | So just to give you a little bit of history. So we started as a at the very beginning we started as a kind of a we thought cross-commodity risk. So we we put a lot of and we have a lot I mean the team is made up of like I said industry veterans from the etm um space as well as. Um, kind of trading risk management technology in General. So we have experienced kind of building that type of architecture. So we we started with ah a cross-commodity cross energy risk focus. But then we had more and more traction and in power and then from their power and natural gas. And power natural gas and renewables. So our focus has been really in in the last I would say you know 12 to eighteen months has been in those areas so you know re name ctm cloud so if I was naming the company now. Maybe I would have called an etm cloud. I think eventually we'll probably go to the other commodity assets but our focus has been basically anything to do with electricity and when you say electricity these days that pretty much comes with you know, renewables and natural gas.
| 12:52.99 | Martin | Okay, cool and terms of ppas again. Ah I think that's quite ah, especially in europe as well. A very hot and difficult topic. Um, if I look at what clients that I engage with Struggle a bit is. Starting already from a pre-trade point of view so to get to the negotiations and make a transaction but of course then from the post trade point of view to get those structures into their systems and. Do a proper p and l performance measurement every day have the right valuation models the right risk management or risk models in Place. So this is something that is tricky and and I'm wondering what what ctm cloud can provide in that context. Do you provide? a. Ah, special way of of flexibility to to capture new payoff structures that comes with clouds is it easy for the client to enable those structures to yours provide then risk models very specific to ppas and their complexity and also evaluation engines. So what is your your offering in that context. And also hedges I think to mention capturing then the the structured hedges that come with it.
| 14:06.90 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Sure sure so in terms of ppa's we don't necessarily. We haven't at this point we haven't done anything that kind of would be what I would call pre trade basically evaluation of the you know is this is. Ah, good ppa. How should I actually structure this. But once once the deal is done um, you know the the various aspects of it. The various kind of um, the original forecasts the original commitments and as that updates along the way we can take that data in and. You know it's it's in electricity in general maybe different from the other commodities. There's a lot of data. The granularity is up to basically up to well up to the markets. But also up to you know your ability to forecast and your your models to forecast. We currently do not have any. Forecasting tools ourselves. We can take in those forecasts and we also work with kind of quantitative shops. We have some partners here in the us that have their own models to forecast those. But once the deal is in. And you're updating that forecast. We can take that data and we can kind of see how those how those trends are you know how how it's changing along the way and and basically the the implied exposures from that you can see that in risk and then you can we have you know all kinds of other tradeit types like that you know you. Your your swaps your options your your regular swaps options and futures and you know other exchange trade products that allow you to maybe head some of that risk we have connectivity to um here in the us ah, the for for electricity. Nodal exchange which is which is I think a subsidiary of ex and and ice those are kind of the 2 main venues for exchange traded stuff but a lot of trading actually happens on the tsos directly and in europe we're we're building um a connectivity to ex at the moment. Um, so a lot of the hedging hedging trades come come in that way.
| 16:17.39 | chrissass | So I get where you where you're positioning. You just give us a little bit of your market perspective are you are you were you first an american company was that your foot first print footprint in North america and then you're just growing into europe up now is that why you describe it that way.
| 16:31.83 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Yeah, we started in America and we in I'd say in the last couple of years we we got we first of all hired some people in europe and we also got some clients in europe um, but yes, our. Original. Our initial experience has been. That's why we have cme iceordal and we're we're we're we're building eax now. Um, yes, that's that's where we're going and the other area that's kind of of interest in in the periphery now is Japan because of the relatively.
| 17:03.82 | chrissass | The placeation.
| 17:07.38 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Ah, recent liberalization of the markets but Japan is kind of a more conservative Market. So we're working with with a partner company in Japan to see what's happening in that market and what what are the opportunities in there. What what do people want to trade and in. And energy I mean that brings in kind of the whole l and g aspects of it. Um, and that's another very very active. Active market. Um, but yeah, so we started in in in North america and and now we're kind of very active in North american europe and we're kind of. We have our eyes on on Japan and the rest of the world.
| 17:42.66 | chrissass | Absolutely And then so being focused specifically and being more of a niche for our power and gas it sounded like we're we're kind of your your niche. Are you complimentary with other Etm systems with most your customers or you like do you. Ah, you generally the only system in most your customers or are you working in conjunction with other ones.
| 18:04.28 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Good question so I would categorize our customers into customers and prospects that we talked to into 3 buckets so in in you know I mentioned electricity natural gas and renewables as the areas where we kind of. Our functionality is the deepest but because of our history and and the desire to build a cross commodity risk system. We actually are a pretty good system. Um for kind of the rest of the energy and and commodity space as well. So we do have customers outside of electricity. Um, and gas and renewables. Ah in those instances we are a complementary system unless they're doing financial only trading so we have some customers that are doing you know financial trading in oil and other commodities and that's fine. You know that's not an issue for us. But the bulk logistics is not something we have now it's in our roadmap but we haven't built that. Um so that the customers our customers. Our earlier customers have been kind of the ones who were kind of priced out of the Market. The trr market. They're small shops. That not necessarily couldn't afford the license costs the upfront license cost but maybe more importantly, the kind of the army of business and technical analysts. You have to have with you know 1 of these old bulky monolithic etrm um systems to implement it to maintain it to run it. Make sure that it's it's up and running and and can support your business. So the smaller shops don't have that don't have those people you know we all we have is the user so we've had a lot of success in that so they these are kind of startups or a small organization. A lot of cni customers. That have to procure a lot of energy or other commodities for their business that don't really have a a big trading team. So we've had success there because they were sitting in spreadsheets and it was it was it was an easy it was you know fit for purpose because. They go in they turn on the system they can start using it right away. So 1 of our customers is managing a 600 million dollars annual energy budget. But it's a team of like a handful of people. Um, and that's that's 1 the other 1 is. A kind of more larger organizations. They are not necessarily ready to do a full blown replacement. You know they have 1 of the big names and they they've had that big name for a long long time. They're afraid to shift. It.
| 20:48.12 | Sulhi Akmehmet | But 1 of the things that happens with those legacy systems is that when there's a change in the markets. They can't really quickly adjust they have this long release cycle so something happens in the Markets. You know they first have to build it that has to be included in the next release which is probably a year or 2 down the line and the organization has to kind of. Gather the forces to to do an upgrade project. That's another year or 2 down the line. So between the time the industry change happens and the users of the system have access to that functionalities multiple years. So that's a reason why some of the larger organizations have kind of come to us and said. Can you for this particular as a point solution. Can you come in and and and and solve this problem so you know building the system we we looked at integration the ease of integration a lot so that that's an area of focus for us so we can definitely sit side by side along with with other systems and integrate to other systems. So that's been kind of the other type of customer. We also have had some you know the last category is probably full on replacement projects that's been more. Not the largest players but more kind of the small to medium size players that kind of have the appetite to um. You know, basically get rid of their legacy system and and and move on to a new system.
| 22:09.81 | chrissass | So your company's name has the word cloud in it and so you're you're talking about the small players getting on board. You're talking about not needing staff you you seem to keep mentioning attributes of perhaps a cloud system. So maybe tell us a little bit about your your architecture and.
| 22:13.59 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Yeah, um.
| 22:27.91 | chrissass | What it means to you to be in the cloud because you started the conversation saying there's software as a service. There's these cloud to help us understand your cloud implementation.
| 22:34.67 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Okay, so I mean the name is because the name is the name because we're not super creative. We can come up with a better name I mean the way I I think about it the way we think about is cloud is kind of means to an end. I think the distinction really is is a software as a service system versus a kind of a piece of complicated software that you have to take on yourself and ah do a lot of work on it customize to your needs and etc before you can use it. Um. We are at the software as a service spectrum so you know I always give the crm um example, it's really old now but Salesforce kind of was the first 1 that said, okay, no software software is a service but nowadays you look at the industry. There's tons of new crm um companies and. None of them are trying to sell on-prem systems. They're all selling software as a service. So our thesis is that the industry for etrm. Um ctm is going to go in that direction we have we built the architecture. it's it's you know using the using modern technologies using the the latest. Stack of technologies. It's cloud native and and everything that brings that cloud nativeness brings with it. So for example, it's a multi-tenant system that that allows a lot of shared global data. in in a lot of implementations. You'll see with legacy systems. The first few weeks and maybe sometimes months is spent on getting reference data into the system. But when you look at that reference data. So you know holiday calendars and currencies and all the pricing indices the various. Hubs nodes trading hubs trading nodes and and delivery nodes pipelines. All of that information eighty ninety percent of that is is really publicly available data. It's not proprietary data at the end of the day when you look at it. The proprietary data is really a handful of stuff like your books your trader names your. Maybe your counterparties that kind of stuff. Um in a multitenant environment. You can make this distinction with being shared global data and tenant specific data and you and you can put you know secure walls between those so that's 1 1 advantage. The other big advantage I see is is kind of the point that I was trying to make earlier with a um with ah with a system. That's not really software as a service you have to kind of wait between the time and an industry change happens.
| 25:15.18 | Sulhi Akmehmet | And when you can have access to the functionality that supports that industry changes a long period of time because you have to wait for this upgrade cycle with software as a service that's kind of transparent you you don't know that the system is being. You know, updated with new enhancements and and new fixes and. And and new new types of functionality. So that's that's a big advantage. The agility that a Multi -tenant true cloud native architecture gives you is is a big advantage to to us. But. Also to our users because they have access to that functionality pretty much right away.
| 25:51.80 | Martin | Okay, so and maybe to to to wrap up and to conclude that topic Cloud think that was very informative already. But I assume you fully Cloud Native solution and provide in that sense right? okay.
| 26:05.87 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Yes, we're a fully Cloud Native Solution multitenant architecture you know? yeah.
| 26:11.22 | Martin | Yeah, cool which brings me to to the next topic more ah moving towards ecosystems and microservices which is also I think development that is utilized and supported by Cloud architectures.
| 26:27.26 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Yet.
| 26:29.99 | Martin | And I'm wondering a bit how you see this development and do you see that the industry is really strongly demanding more microservice architectures are they willing your clients that you have and prospects are they're willing to move in that direction to move away from legacy vendors because that requires quite some. Know how as well from an architectural point of view. But also I think to fully utilize that setup to be maybe also able on the business side to develop functionality in form of I don't know microservices um developer themselves.
| 26:51.70 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Chair.
| 27:03.53 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Yeah, the.
| 27:05.20 | Martin | So what is your view on that and how do you position yourself in that context.
| 27:08.20 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Yeah, so we built a system based on a microservices architecture. We use a platform called vertex. But that's I think good development practice because building a new large enterprise level system. As kind of modular pieces is good development practice because it you know makes it more maintainable. It makes it easier to add stuff to it. It can grow without basically breaking a monolithic system is going to be much more fragile as it grows in size and and you see that in legacy systems. But. The nice thing that comes out of that that good development or software architecture practice that you get from a user's perspective. You get modularity. You can. Basically you can say we're going to only use the you know trading and risk management but we don't care about your back office features and that's what you take on. Um, so the modularity definitely so microservices. Yes, we are based on a microservices architecture and our system is very modular and that kind of enables us to not only serve our small customers end-to-end needs but also be able to go into these larger customers. Are not ready to take on a full on replacement project and say we only need this piece and and we can we can serve them the other thing that has to come with that is Modularity is the the ease of integration you have to have clear apis we have restful apis for all of our microservices. You know ways and you have to build these data integration tools so you can get stuff in so we have a base before anything that any business object that we have in in the system we can actually have. We can take that data in and take that data out in various Formats. Csv json files and so on.
| 28:59.20 | Martin | So okay, cool I think you mentioned a very interesting topic from a client point of view integration. So when you shift or move as a client towards more microservice based architecture in the cloud that has of courses. Strong impact on your on the client's architectural, um, design and he needs to figure out how he can integrate and or connect his systems and services with what you provide on the Cloud. So maybe building all the interfaces. But. But I'm wondering in in that context is is this process of integration something that you leave to the client to figure it out and manage it or do you provide? Ah let's say an integration roadmap um and really work hand in hand together with the client to. To build up the architectural design and and set up that is required.
| 29:55.97 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Yeah, so we're I think going through that journey Now we're still a you know relatively small team compared to you know say your legacy vendors out there. So the amount of time that we can resources that we can spend on that kind of.
| 30:03.45 | Martin | Um.
| 30:14.23 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Almost like an advisory role I would say or or implementation support role is limited so what we do is we work with a lot of partners to help us with that. Um, because the amount of time that's spent on that in our experience has been kind of upfront kind of doing it. Nice plan about what is it that you're integrating and what purposes and what's going in what's going out and once that's done right? The rest is is is a lot easier because on our side we have very clear apis and we have multiple ways of getting communicating with our system. Ah, you know with Proprietary analytics. You can you can plug in your proprietary analytics. You can get data in and out pretty easily in various data formats. We have clear apis we have 1 partner firm that has built a mobile app for ah like basic trade entry. That that actually talks to our system just using our apis and we didn't really have to do you know much if any handholding with them but the actual kind of what I would call the project management aspects of it or the no the project planning aspects of it. We we have. Um, capacity. But we typically work with the customers or or the partners that we work with that to help the customer kind of get a get their heads around and in the various pieces and how they put fit together in their ecosystem in the client's ecosystem.
| 31:44.75 | chrissass | So so you work with the customer to get them set up and then once you're on board. What kind of support model. Do you have.
| 31:51.17 | Sulhi Akmehmet | We I mean so being on the cloud and and and web and you know everything's on ah in a web browser. Essentially so we have a lot of the online support but we we are. We're not we haven't gone full on into that model yet. So we do have a support team. We know. We would like see jeremy chairm to be as easy as other software to not really need that but we're nowhere there so we do have a regular support model so you know emails and telephone and video video calls and we do all of that and and being kind of in in. And multiple time Zones helps us to to support our clients kind of 24 7.
| 32:31.49 | chrissass | So you you mentioned then see we got the onboarding process kind of a normal support model that I hear you're talking about so back to the ecosystem kind of question I mean you you talked about some exchanges that you interoperate with is is is this more of a. Like App store approach is there more of you know what?? what? What are you?? What's your approach to the ecosystem I Guess what? What do you think? and I saw you roll your eyes on the word app store. So I can tell the listeners that it's probably not an app store sorry to call you out on that.
| 32:56.70 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Ah, that's why I didn't want to be on the video. No just ki, but now the app store I mean app store I see I mean salesforce tried to do that and there's some not to name any names. But. There's some um et ctra vendors not etherum vendors necessarily that kind of have thought about it I think app stores is that that term is this is my personal opinion. It's kind of a gimmick. Ah but in terms of being building modular pieces that you can kind of take. And try to connect I think I think that is real um and you know using this is not I'm using once it it already is happening today right? So a lot of the large organizations have basically every et I'm out there. You know. None of them really have a single et they they a lot of times they pick best of breed but more more frequently. It's up to the people who are actually doing that particular decision right? So you're taking that decision so they say oh well I like this system so I want that and the traders get that system but you know basically. Down the hole. There's another team that's actually using another system. So that's happening kind of asset asset asset by asset but also functionality so a lot of people will be using a you know, maybe a different credit management system or limit management system. So the applications do have to talk. To each other and if you already from the ground up if you build them as modular pieces using a microservices type architecture and build the the apis and and the ways to communicate with those then that becomes a lot easier. Um, and we've seen that happen. Happen in action with our customers.
| 34:48.83 | Martin | So okay, um, we'd like to shift a bit of topics now I think that was very enlightening in terms of cloud and ecosystem and your approach. Um so quite modern I would say and then on the frontrunning side when it comes to those 2 topics. Um. But let's talk a bit about a topic that you mentioned at the very beginning automation or I think you mentioned ago trading it's definitehanly on the rise in europe I think also and North america where you have your client base. Um, so what. But kind of development. Do you see when it comes to arbitr trading. Is it something that is strongly increasing I mean the demands of utilities and electricityy produces and what kind of demands do they have do they want to build their own strategies. Do they want to build out of-the- box strategies. Do they need as a technical framework and and how do you if you think already so far because I think that's quite an advanced topic. How do you position yourself as a ctm cloud when it comes to ago tradingating.
| 35:55.97 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Yeah I mean so I did mention out with trading because we we see that happening in the industry. We personally do not have any um I mean our clients can do alga trading. We don't have any clients who are actually have alga trading programs today. We have clients in the us who are doing um, you know relatively high speed trading kind of short-term trading and that's how they're making you know making their money but we definitely see the algo trading coming now. It's kind of a roadmap item for us in terms of. To evaluate. Whether there is something that we can do on top of what we already have we our system is very um, you know, performing and highly scalable. So it does support large trade volumes and and the speed of ah trade trade entry and so on. But for algo trading. There's the algorithm itself I think in my opinion, a lot of lot of players will probably want to keep that proprietary so you have to kind of build your have to be thinking more of a platform or or you know plugin approach but what we have to do on our side as an etrm um is to enable them to. Get those trades in the system to to watch the mark to to give them enough tools so they can actually use it as a decision analysis tool. Um, but also to to be able to kind of consume those those um algo trades in the system and and you know, update your position so people can still. Still see what's going on in real time. So the things that we have today that are in our kind of favor for algo trading type of setup is that we are highly performing. Highly scalable. Everything's real time. You don't have to wait for batch processes. And we built the system in a way that that we can take in all of that data at the speed that they come in the piece that I think we're missing is probably the connectivity old to all the various venues trading venues. So definitely exchanges. Thats you know we're. We've made good progress. There. Maybe we have a little bit more to do but we have to kind of enable all of those other trading valueues because you can't really have an algar trading program if you don't have those connections to execute those those trades.
| 38:15.35 | Martin | Gap So when you when you talk about that. You really mean being able to submit orders in the order book and not just receive then from the venues. The the trades that have been made you really have on on your roadmate That's and I understood.
| 38:15.71 | chrissass | So is.
| 38:34.91 | Martin | Ah, building ah an execution layer for. Okay, yeah, thanks.
| 38:35.35 | Sulhi Akmehmet | yeah yeah I mean order management is is something that comes up. It's as a topic sometimes people think of it as an internal you know, eat the like larger organizations kind of think of it as an internal order management. So we have customers who have you know multiple. Trading desk and they're all putting in orders and they they want like some quote unquote order management. You know, kind of internal order management and so for our trading you need to kind of enhance that concept into basically an actual order management system. It's an area that we have. We're focusing on but a lot of our roadmap is really governed by um, things like this that we see happening in the markets. But maybe more importantly, what our clients are kind of needing and asking us to do um so it's gonna be a combination of those. 2 things to see there's a world of functionality to build so as we're deciding on what comes first. We we kind of put the customers our current customers first and and you know ah industry trends as ah as a secondary item.
| 39:45.52 | chrissass | So So what I've heard so far is that you have a cloud-based software as a service platform I interact through Apis It's it's designed to be easy onboarded and you differentiate yourself because you kind of specialize in energy and gas in your performant is is that. Your pitch is that what you would tell me if if you were coming to say hey come you know come look at Us. What are you differentiating on what you know what? what makes you not commodity. What what makes you special did I cover it or other other things.
| 40:15.39 | Sulhi Akmehmet | I Think I think that's that's good I like that I I also would add I think that we are so we have a we have a really strong Team. We. We're all experienced in in. Both the technology and energy space. Um, and that definitely helps and that's part of our pitch. That's part of our elevator pitch but also our goal is to basically take you know I was saying this before etrm um to make etrm is a. As as self-service and ah as software as a service as Possible. You know, basically taking it to you the same kind of transformation that the the crm industry went through whatever 1020 years ago.
| 41:05.33 | chrissass | And then so your customer centric the the 1 thing I haven't heard much is your ux right? You you mentioned it's kind of a web front end great a lot of stuff's a web front end so tell us about your ux.
| 41:14.70 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Yeah, yeah, so we put a lot of effort into it. We use I mean not to get too technical so we have you know a javascript type Script h d m l five ah web ui you know we're using a lot of. Reporting types of tools various packages I'm not going to name them but lots of slicing and dicing that's possible I would say I mean there are all these kind of professional expensive bi tools out there I would I would argue what we've built is is is a minibi tool so people don't really have to. Go outside to to do their slicing and dicing and pivoting and charting all of that. That's all in the system. Um lot of it's a very modern looking ui because we just built it and we've used kind of the the latest ux kind of. Methodologies technologies and and and the ideas and we're using you know some of the latest tools. So it's ah I'm quite proud of our our ah user interface every time we do a demo people people actually say oh you got a really slick user interface and I'm saying that not because. Build something that doesn't exist anywhere else. It just doesn't yet exist in the etrm um space because everything out there is so old I mean most things out there are so old. Everything looks clunky. So so we got the advantage to be compared to those guys. But if you were to compare us to other like web-based applications. A lot of the consumer web-based applications were basically a par with that but lot of lot of reporting reporting types of features that that we focused on a lot of slicing dicing pivoting charting that type of stuff.
| 42:57.27 | chrissass | So I have 1 kind of final question before we end up this segment and then I'll I'll let Martin ask his kind of last questions in this segment. Um, so what was uniquely so you started your footprint in North america and you're moving to europe what? What did you need to do special or what What's so much different. You know, moving to the european market ah, are there different things that your considerations are different features that you needed to create to meet the needs to to cross the Pond so to speak.
| 43:24.37 | Sulhi Akmehmet | I mean we had to have people that's 1 so we had to have people there to reach out I mean when when we were reaching out from here. It was just it's not that easy in terms of Markets. There are definitely differences between the 2 markets especially when it comes to electricity and gas I mean it's it's. Quite different. Fortunately I in my personal opinion the European electricity and gas markets are actually a lot more straightforward I prefer those the the Us markets are a lot more convoluted the whole settlement. The iso settlement process is is kind of a nightmare. Um. Yeah, so those are those are those nuances we had to pick up but we haven't we have an experienced system I mean the team we have people within the team who had worked in in all of those markets before so we knew that was coming. So It wasn't like okay let's try to talk to some people and then we found that we already knew that we had to build those and we were kind of along our way to build those otherwise we wouldn't have gotten to the clients in Europe that that we got but yeah, definitely definitely different markets when it comes to energy trading.
| 44:32.86 | chrissass | Martin Any final questions before we change segments.
| 44:35.34 | Martin | Um, no I'm good I'm good I'm happy to move on.
| 44:38.96 | chrissass | All right? So what we're gonna do now is we're gonna change gears and we're go into our speed route. It's 10 questions that are short answers so not necessarily 1 word but not necessarily five minutes just a you know a brief answer if you do it or not if anything seems.
| 44:45.18 | Sulhi Akmehmet | So.
| 44:56.80 | chrissass | Redundant it's only because we ask every vendor that's participating in the etr mini seriesies the same 10 questions we're going to alternate back and forth I will start off. Um, so the first question will the number of vendors for each your m solutions shrink or expand in your opinion in the future.
| 45:11.30 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Shrink There'll be more consolidation and I think that's I mean not to prolong my answer but you kind of already seeing it with the various acquisitions but I'll stop there.
| 45:15.71 | Martin | Okay.
| 45:25.22 | chrissass | No you it's fair to give ah a short answer. It's it's fair to answer as you feel five. It's not a 1 word answer right? Martin you're up.
| 45:32.47 | Martin | Great then second question so how many deals per minute must the modern etherem system today. Be capable to imports.
| 45:44.87 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Ah, it's a good question I mean that hasn't been a problem for us because we don't really have allgo trading type of customers I I personally come from a capital markets background where you know fx trading For example, the numbers for that was.
| 45:52.30 | Martin | Um.
| 46:03.64 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Many many digits. So let's say a thousand trace per minute.
| 46:09.45 | Martin | Crop repeat.
| 46:09.55 | chrissass | Yeah, so what commodity types and energy types are you offering in which ones do you consider your your greatest strengths.
| 46:16.97 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Um, we are cross commodity our you know level of the depth of the support is is the you know electricity natural gas renewables. That's that's where we're basically you know that's where we have that's where we Shine. We do have customers in other commodities that you know we have customers in oil. Um, that where we sit side by side with with other systems to to where they handle their bulk logistics. Um.
| 46:48.90 | Martin | Okay, then fourth question. Do you offer real time position management module and how real time is it so is it really Eventri when there is new tradeits it automatically updates or.
| 47:03.70 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Um, yes, everything in our system is is a real time. We have an event-based system or the microservices talk to each other in events. So the real timeness of your risk and position reports really depend on the input data which is 2
| 47:06.35 | Martin | Is it more scheduled.
| 47:21.55 | Sulhi Akmehmet | 1 is the trades and the other 1 is the is the incoming Market data and we have connectivity to various market data vendors or clients can also build their own market data feeds into our system.
| 47:32.29 | chrissass | Cool all right? So do you have an automated workflow for straight through processing.
| 47:37.25 | Sulhi Akmehmet | We do. We have that for for we built a ah trade workflow for for trades and and also the payment slash invoicing process and we will extend that to other processes in the in the system as well.
| 47:51.66 | Martin | Um, okay, can your E them solution price Asian options.
| 47:58.37 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Yes, we have a Inbuilt Asian option pricing model Turnbull Wakeman we implemented turnbull Wakeman model but people can actually also plug in their own prop proprietary models if they'd like to.
| 48:10.91 | Martin | Okay, cool.
| 48:13.25 | chrissass | So are you offering full integration and implementation services for your eachrm solution.
| 48:18.57 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Yes, we do sometimes depending on the needs that might happen alongside with a partner but we do sure.
| 48:27.11 | Martin | Um, okay so from your perspective. What is the biggest threat for third party etm vendors if there is any.
| 48:38.77 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Um, what is the biggest I'm sorry I can biggest threat to third party trm vendors.
| 48:43.10 | Martin | Exactly the threat or challenges.
| 48:49.50 | Sulhi Akmehmet | I mean not sure if I'm gonna be answering your question. So I when I when I think about ctrm cloud The biggest threat is is that that we misexecute I don't think the industry itself is going anywhere. Um, and I think etr m. Etherm people will need etms and I don't think the I mean the only threat out there which I don't think is ah is a serious threat that's going to eliminate the etm industries is people deciding to do more and more in-house. But the trends I see is actually. People wanting to use their internal teams for more value. Add stuff and getting etm um type of functionality and services from vendors so execution just just missteps by the eterms themselves.
| 49:38.71 | chrissass | Cool all right? So what is your licensing model like and do you anticipate it changing in the future.
| 49:45.99 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Um, Well we have a subscription based model. So No upfront license cost. It's that's I think almost almost pretty standard these days and it's a pretty.. It's basically modules that you're using alongside with with the number of users I don't We don't have any plans to change it I don't I don't. I Don't see any need to change it.
| 50:07.58 | Martin | Okay, then last question are you providing Apis for data exchange and what is the technology behind it.
| 50:18.24 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Yeah, so we have we have restful apis so you can baseally access our microservices using restful apis the the payload the the community the data in and out is is it can be in those apis is Json format. But we also have data. In and out tools that that use things like Csv excel and you know xml and other formats that just for kind of data integration data in data out.
| 50:45.61 | chrissass | Awesome! Well, that's our 10 questions you've gotten through the speed round. Um, as we wrap up the program I wanted to give you a minute or 2 to perhaps you have let our audience know why they should reach out to you. So if you want to give your best elevator pitch or why they should be talking to you.
| 51:01.86 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Um, so I think a lot of what I would call my elevator pitch. We've kind of touched on those topics I think we're I'm very proud of the team we have. We have lots of experience in in the space. The energy space as well as the technology and we've done this before we we have a lot of lessons learned from previous experiences and that's a good thing. We're taking advantage of all of those things and we have a really good system. Um, really great user experience. Most importantly, it's based it's always. Up to the Market. You don't have to wait for the next upgrade to actually have the functionality that that that you need in your system. So yeah, definitely give us a call if you're trading energy or other commodities for that matter and we'd be happy to find out what it is that. That you need and and and if we're a good fit.
| 51:53.51 | chrissass | Well thank you so much for participating in the educational miniseries for our audience this concludes another episode of insider's guide to energy each year I miniseries
| 51:57.90 | Sulhi Akmehmet | Thank you for having me.
| 52:00.11 | Martin | Thank you.
| 52:10.25 | chrissass | Ah, please listen to the entire series find out what the differences between the vendors. There's 13 vendors that have participated in this series. So we hope you enjoy it. You can find all the information you want at ww www dot insiders guide to energy dot com. Thank you so much for your time.