Aspect, first and largest vendor of cloud-based energy and commodity trade and risk management (ETRM / CTRM) software, has seen sales for the first half of the year climb to a record 16-year high as even the largest global organizations are dumping entrenched, legacy software and moving to the cloud.
Booking more than $7M in new business through the first 6 months of the year, an increase of 127% over the same period in 2015, Aspect has become the replacement solution of choice for user organizations blighted by traditional client-server solutions that require either costly upgrades or pay-all-over-again replacement versions to remain competitive. Conversely, Aspect’s monthly subscription model sees fully-tested fresh versions, fixes and upgrades delivered to desktops automatically and transparently at no extra cost.
Now regarded as the CTRM sector disruptor, Aspect has this year signed 8 new deals with global top tier trading companies in the metals, coal and oil trading sectors, including Ferrocadia and MENA Energy. Aspect’s functional expertise, rapid implementation and proven scalability all played an important part in this success. The company did particularly well in North America and the Middle East where sales were consistently ahead of target.
Steve Hughes is CEO of Aspect and formerly of its predecessor OILspace, the company that pioneered cloud CTRM 16 years ago. Since then Aspect’s continually evolving solutions have helped put the cloud front and center of the industry. “The world has moved on but legacy CTRM solutions have not,” said Hughes. “Users are paying for support and updates to software going nowhere. The cloud is a way out of that cycle, a route to software with a future for minimum pain and maximum gain.”
Switchers to Aspect can typically achieve cloud CTRM implementation in as little as eight weeks, with ongoing cost of ownership typically comparable to the cost of support only for legacy software.
“Where once it was just the small and mid-tier market, there’s little doubt that cloud vendors now effectively own the whole market. Meanwhile there’s evidence that legacy vendors are abandoning their traditional products, leaving users themselves to find alternatives,” added Hughes.
