Uniper and Openlink Lead the Way in Tier-One Cloud ETRM Adoption

International utility implements sophisticated trading and risk
management solution via Openlink Cloud

LONDON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Openlink, the global leader in trading, treasury and risk management
solutions for the energy, commodities, corporate and financial services
industries, has announced a deal with the international energy company,
Uniper based in Germany, to move its extensive energy trading and risk
management (ETRM) systems into the Cloud. This marks the first fully
public Cloud ETRM implementation for a company of Uniper’s size and
prestige.

The 700-user deal will include two applications of Openlink’s system,
covering front-to-back office trading and risk management support across
Uniper’s asset classes including oil, gas, LNG and power.

Uniper has one of the world’s largest and most extensive energy trading
portfolios, both to supply its broad fleet of generation assets and for
proprietary trading purposes. Uniper’s goal is to migrate from its
current hosting facility into a future ready, fully scalable and cost
effective Cloud offering from Openlink.

Having worked with Openlink on other solutions for the past 15 years,
and with a new five-year partnership agreement in place since 2016,
Uniper already had a trusted partner in Openlink. The timing was also
perfect: Openlink has invested heavily in bringing its award-winning
systems to the Cloud and developing industry-leading expertise. This
meant that Openlink was able to deliver the ideal solution to include
Openlink Cloud, cloud management tools and ancillary services to fulfill
Uniper’s requirements.

In a three-month proof of concept (POC) project between October 2016 and
January 2017 it was demonstrated that the system could provide the
required featureset, security and computing power while maintaining
access to historical data.

The POC showed that a Cloud-based delivery could not only match current
performance, but significantly improve it, for example by accelerating
end of day batch processing along with allowing intra day calculations
that would not have been possible on premise. The solution was also
shown to lower the total cost of ownership by enabling Uniper to only
pay for what it needed, scaling to suit requirements all this in
combination with a sophisticated security stack and integration into the
Uniper downstream systems.

As is typical for a utility of Uniper’s size, the existing system
included highly customised physical and virtual components and bespoke
user interfaces.

“There are a lot of challenges in recreating highly customised software
ecosystems completely in the public Cloud,” says Rich Grossi, CEO at
Openlink. “However, we’ve built a robust Cloud environment at Openlink
and we’re confident it is up to the task. The fact that Uniper agrees is
testament to the power of our Cloud offering.”

“Uniper is at the center of the global energy markets,” says Marco
Scherer, SVP Sales and Trading IT at Uniper. “Our traders need the very
best technology underpinning their actions to ensure we are always
managing our risk responsibly. To be able to do so while reducing IT
spend and increasing performance is a hugely attractive proposition.
With Openlink Cloud, we will be able to even better support the
Uniper Business activities and our future Business developments with
this future proven, scalable and pay-per-use Cloud solution.”

About Openlink

For more than 25 years, Openlink (www.Openlink.com)
has been providing trading, treasury and risk management solutions for
the world’s most sophisticated commodity, energy, corporate and
financial services organisations.

Openlink’s innovative solutions help clients break down organizational
silos and instantaneously connects trading, risk and treasury across
multiple asset classes and throughout the front, middle and back office.
The Openlink Cloud platform, coupled with our advanced analytics,
enables clients to manage huge data volumes, take advantage of even the
most fleeting of market opportunities, and mitigate risk.

Openlink has topped Chartis’ RiskTech100 Energy Trading Risk Category
for the last six years and been named a Leader in Gartner’s Trading
Platforms Magic Quadrant. Other accolades include the Treasury
Management International awards, Energy Risk awards and Central Banking
awards.

Openlink is proud to support more than 38,000 users and more than 600
clients, including 12 of the world's largest commodity/energy companies,
9 of the largest financial institutions, and 13 central banks.

Contacts

Openlink
Liz Allen, +44 (0)79 0026 8478
[email protected]