The Cloud is unquestionably the future for energy and commodities trade and risk management (E/CTRM) solutions. The pace with which it is getting there is accelerating. And even very large trading firms are now embracing the Cloud as earlier concerns over security are allayed. These are the headline findings from a new industry round table conducted by analyst and research firm Commodity Technology Advisory (ComTech) and revealed today by vendor Aspect Enterprise Solutions.

The round table results reinforce those of a major research project and report by ComTech which concluded that the Cloud was increasingly replacing the on-premises software model once preferred by trading companies. The change is being driven by a sluggish global economy that favors lower cost, Cloud-based alternatives.

Among vendors’ representatives taking part in the ComTech round table, Aspect’s vice president of EMEA sales Yags Savania told the group that Cloud technology’s much faster return on investment would be the catalyst for widespread adoption: “Over time return on investment is realized far quicker in cloud models and I believe this will ultimately push the market to [the] Cloud.”
 
He also cited Cloud solutions’ speed of implementation, ease of integration, centralized vendor support and inherent any-device mobility as important factors in their increasing acceptance. But during the debate it was the issue of security that came up the most together with concerns from some users that data was at risk or that trades could be open to unwarranted scrutiny.

“The perception was that the cloud is insecure. [But] it has been shown that the cloud can be just as private and secure as the traditional model,” said Savania, adding that service level agreements offered an ideal way to guarantee security. “The customer should really think about their preferred vendor’s security procedures, ownership of data [and] access security. These elements should be clearly defined in the SLA.”

A full account of the round table is available http://www.aspectenterprise.com/pdf/comtech-roundtable-cloud_ctrm.pdf.