ETRM systems are, by their nature, complex software products as the software must mirror the full complexity of the commodities industries, markets, and assets that they serve. Spanning from contract administration through invoicing and settlement, the business processes involved in commodity trading varies greatly. This variation is created by the unique combinations and nature of the physical or financial commodity or commodities traded, as well as by the industry segment (power generation/trading, gas production/trading, agricultural production/trading, etc.), the assets employed in the supply chain(s) and geographic differences (North American power vs. European vs. Japan, for example).

1. REIMAGINING ENERGY TRADING
AND RISK MANAGEMENT (ETRM)
WITH ADVANCED DELIVERY AND
SUPPORT
WHITE PAPER
Sponsored by

2. Reimagining Energy Trading and Risk Management (ETRM) With Advanced Delivery and Support A ComTechAdvisory Whitepaper
© Commodity Technology Advisory LLC, 2021, All Rights Reserved.
INTRODUCTION
ETRM systems are, by their nature, complex software products as the software must
mirror the full complexity of the commodities industries, markets, and assets that
they serve. Spanning from contract administration through invoicing and settlement,
the business processes involved in commodity trading varies greatly. This variation
is created by the unique combinations and nature of the physical or financial
commodity or commodities traded, as well as by the industry segment (power
generation/trading, gas production/trading, agricultural production/trading, etc.),
the assets employed in the supply chain(s) and geographic differences (North
American power vs. European vs. Japan, for example).
Unfortunately, this creates a wide variance, not
only in functionality and capabilities required
to model unique market processes, but it can
also create conflicts in terms of the trading
tenor (24-hour markets vs. five-minute markets)
and the types of transactions commonly
conducted in any individual marketplace or set
of markets. While these variances obviously
create complexity in the design and coding of
the software, they also create significant issues
in supporting that software after it goes into
production. This is only magnified by rapid
change in the industry as new market processes
or other requirements are introduced into the
market that must be reflected, via updates, in
the ETRM software.
The complex upgrade process is further
complicated by the user’s own particular
application environment or ecosystem.
Companies using ETRM software solutions
will often create any number of interfaces, and
even custom functionality, to fit their unique mix
of assets or trading strategies, each of which
adds additional burdens to the installation and
testing process for each software update or
version upgrade. Deploying and testing new
code can require days, weeks, or even multiple
months of effort prior to an update or upgrade
being put into production.
Power trading and marketing firms have been
particularly impacted by frequent ETRM
software updates. With the recent influx of
renewable resources in almost all regions and
markets, and the subsequent roll-out of new
2

3. Reimagining Energy Trading and Risk Management (ETRM) With Advanced Delivery and Support A ComTechAdvisory Whitepaper
© Commodity Technology Advisory LLC, 2021, All Rights Reserved.
trading products, the pace of change in the
industry is rapid and seemingly never ending
– requiring more frequent updates to critical
software capabilities to maintain synchronicity
with market requirements. For companies of
all sizes, these ETRM software updates can
become very burdensome as each requires
acceptance testing prior to being put into
production. Often, the company must either
deploy a team of dedicated professionals, or
increase the workload on what is already a
fully resourced staff of commercial resources,
including contract administration, trading,
scheduling and settlements. The effort
required for even minor upgrades can be a
time-consuming drain on company resources,
and larger scale version upgrades can be much
more difficult to manage and potentially even
disruptivetocommercialoperations.Particularly
for smaller companies with relatively localized
and/or less complex operations, a software
vendor’s requirements for them to take a large
upgrade to maintain support, can be particularly
disruptive. They may not even truly benefit from
the upgrade as their functional requirements
may be already addressed in their current
version, or they may only require a small update
to address the needs of the specific markets or
commodities in which they operate.
Given the need to stay current with their
ETRM software in order to comply with the
support and maintenance agreements, and
more importantly, ensure the solution stays
current with industry requirements, including
critical cyber security mandates, any ability to
speed up the process and ease the burdens of
safely deploying vendor’s updates is generally
welcomed by users. However, as noted, this
is a complex issue. Recognizing the value of
improving that process for their customers, FIS
is one vendor that has developed a streamlined
approach and advanced technologies to provide
tangible improvements and ensure that their
clients’ needs are being met effectively and
efficiently.
3

4. Reimagining Energy Trading and Risk Management (ETRM) With Advanced Delivery and Support A ComTechAdvisory Whitepaper
© Commodity Technology Advisory LLC, 2021, All Rights Reserved. 4
FIS’ Continuous Delivery Model, or CDM, has been
rigorously designed to provide closer cooperation
between FIS and their clients to better ensure that
those clients can stay current with new releases and
with annual upgrades of the FIS platform. Maintaining
this currency ensures that each update/upgrade is
a single-step event avoiding the necessity to move
through multiple upgrades prior to delivering critical
capabilities available to users. This means that smaller
and less complex updates are required, and users are
assured of the lowest cost and least effort-intensive
upgrades possible.
Additionally, with the close cooperation and continuous
communication inherent in the CDM program,
participating customers receive the latest capabilities
and upgraded functionality as soon as they are released,
witheachreleasetested(viaautomatedtestingroutines)
against that customer’s relevant business processes.
Further, with close and open communication with FIS’
product team, those customers can better ensure
their needs and interests are well represented in FIS’
development roadmap.
Though many vendors may offer some type of upgraded
support model, FIS’ CDM extends beyond offering just
improved communication, cooperation, and support
responsiveness. The key differentiators of CDM
versus an “upgraded support service” is actually FIS’
containerized code delivery model. With containerized
delivery, all code deployments are automated and
can be quickly implemented with little or no customer
intervention. Additionally, as new code is developed
to address a critical issue, updates can arrive and be
put into production in less than a day. In fact, FIS has
demonstrated its ability to quickly address critical
issues with new code put into production at a client site
in less than an hour. And, perhaps most importantly,
by using containerized delivery, users can remain
online throughout the processes, experiencing no
interruptions or lost time on the system. The ability to
providetheseveryrapidupdatesviatheCDMprogramis
facilitated by regular (e.g. monthly) upgrades of the test
environment and available testing of the system under
customer specific configuration and customizations
using utilizing automated test cases.
To ensure that their FIS Energy Trading, Risk and Logistics Platform (formerly Aligne) clients’
specific needs are being met, both in terms of rapidly developing required functionality
enhancements, and in helping to facilitate testing and integration of those new capabilities
prior to going into production, FIS designed a new approach that reduces the huge burden
placed on users by constant upgrades, even minor ones.
ADDRESSING THE SUPPORT
CHALLENGE

5. Reimagining Energy Trading and Risk Management (ETRM) With Advanced Delivery and Support A ComTechAdvisory Whitepaper
© Commodity Technology Advisory LLC, 2021, All Rights Reserved. 5
From a technical perspective, containerization enables virtualization at the level of the operating
system (OS). It enables you to deploy and run applications without launching an entire virtual
machine (VM) for each application server. It allows multiple isolated applications or services to
run on a single host and access the same OS kernel.
HOW DOES THIS WORK?
The use of application containers consumes fewer
hardware resources than a comparable VM deployment.
They share resources without requiring a full OS to
underpin each application service. The approach uses
memory, CPU and storage resources more efficiently,
allowing user companies to deploy more application
containers on the same hardware infrastructure.
The containerized model also centralizes and simplifies
application administration. The container engine
deploys the application images on one or more
hosts and a simple-to-use dashboard enables robust
application monitoring. There is no requirement to
go through servers to secure virtual machines. FIS
estimates a 90% cost savings on human resource
effort can be achieved for maintaining containerized
applications in comparison with VM’s.
In cloud services environments that offer elastic
pricing models, dynamic use of resources through
containerization offers even more cost reductions. A
containerized application can scale resource use on
demand based on preconfigured limits. There is no
requirement to go through servers to secure virtual
machines. FIS estimates 30% cost optimization by
utilizing elastic computing power, as clients pay for
what the application uses and not resources reserved
for VM.
Rolling patch updates don’t just automate deployment
- they reduce 90% of human resource time for several
environments including installation and patches
compared with VM. They also eliminate downtime
and, as previously indicated, avoid user and process
disruption. The container engine deploys container
images on hosts and supports live updates of images
while users are still active within the system. Just as
important, the containerized model provides simpler
and cheaper availability and disaster recovery.

6. Reimagining Energy Trading and Risk Management (ETRM) With Advanced Delivery and Support A ComTechAdvisory Whitepaper
© Commodity Technology Advisory LLC, 2021, All Rights Reserved. 6
Further,withcontainerization,theseclientswillhaveless
painful upgrades and be able to utilize lower overhead
environments to accept development upgrades in
isolation and test without upsetting their production
environment. This ensures high levels of confidence
and lower risks and costs when taking a GA release
into production. Containerization also allows patches
to be rolled into the production environment without
any downtime. As the container engine deploys images
on hosts and supports the live update of those images,
users active on the system experience no disruptions
while updates are occurring.
This highly automated support process provides FIS’
Energy Trading, Risk and Logistics Platform (formerly
Aligne) clients with the very latest capabilities and
upgraded functionality available. In addition, by working
closely with FIS’ product team, these clients are better
able to convey and represent their interests and needs
to FIS, helping to ensure that their most critical system
continues to meet their needs as their trading and
marketing strategies, and the markets in which they
operate, continue to evolve.
With CDM, clients receive numerous benefits versus a traditional or conventional support model.
By working in close cooperation with clients and their users, FIS can better ensure those clients
stay current with continuing code developments and annual upgrades; helping to minimize the
client’s efforts, and risks, associated with putting each new release or version upgrade into full
production.
CUSTOMER BENEFITS OF CDM ENABLED
BY CONTAINERIZATION

7. Reimagining Energy Trading and Risk Management (ETRM) With Advanced Delivery and Support A ComTechAdvisory Whitepaper
© Commodity Technology Advisory LLC, 2021, All Rights Reserved. 7
With a considerable track record of issues around
delivering timely and cost-effective upgrades to users,
the ETRM and broader CTRM software category has
gained a reputation in which users often fall behind on
gaining access to important functionality or critical bug
fixes. This often results in significant issues with the
system, user dissatisfaction, increased risk to business
operations and an increasing need to build additional
custom capabilities around the commercial solution.
In fact, ComTech has observed many instances in
which having fallen considerably behind, companies
end up having to procure a new solution to start with
a fresh slate or engage in a complex and expensive
re-implementation of their current solution. Any
improvement in ability to stay current on a software
solution, particularly one as critical as E/CTRM, is a
differentiator for the vendor.
FIS is a global technically advanced vendor with
significant resources and expertise across the company
in delivering and supporting software and services. It
has been able to leverage this expertise for its energy
and commodities customers that use its FIS Energy
Trading, Risk and Logistics Platform (formerly Aligne)
solution to build a support delivery model that appears
to provide significant advantages for its users; and
adds what may well be an important differentiator to
its brand.
SUMMARY

8. SPONSORED BY FIS
FIS is a leading provider of technology solutions for
merchants, banks and capital markets firms globally.
Our employees are dedicated to advancing the way
the world pays, banks and invests by applying our
scale, deep expertise and data-driven insights. We
help our clients use technology in innovative ways to
solve business-critical challenges and deliver superior
experiences for their customers. Headquartered in
Jacksonville, Florida, FIS is a Fortune 500® company
and is a member of Standard & Poor’s 500® Index.
To learn more, visit www.fisglobal.com. Follow FIS on
Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (@FISGlobal)

9. ABOUT
Commodity
Technology
Advisory
LLC
Commodity Technology Advisory is the leading analyst organization covering the ETRM and
CTRM markets. We provide the invaluable insights into the issues and trends affecting the
users and providers of the technologies that are crucial for success in the constantly evolving
global commodities markets.
Patrick Reames and Gary Vasey head our team, whose combined 60-plus years in the energy
and commodities markets, provides depth of understanding of the market and its issues that is
unmatched and unrivaled by any analyst group.
For more information, please visit:
www.comtechadvisory.com
ComTech Advisory also hosts the CTRMCenter, your online portal with news and views about
commodity markets and technology as well as a comprehensive online directory of software
and services providers.
Please visit the CTRMCenter at:
www.ctrmcenter.com
19901 Southwest Freeway
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ComTechAdvisory.com
Email: info@comtechadvisory.com