Reports Disruptive Technologies in Commodity Trading | Page 3

INTRODUCTION
Over the last few years, a host of potentially disruptive technologies have emerged that may
yet have tremendous impacts on aspects of commodity trading and commodity supply chain
business processes. These technologies join the shift to cloud deployment and software-as-
a-service (SaaS) that we have observed taking on greater importance in the delivery of CTRM
solutions recently. Technologies such as blockchain, automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and
Machine Learning (ML), big data and social media, micro-services and open source software
have all caught the imagination of software providers and industry players over this period. In
particular, there has been a great deal of interest and considerable hype around blockchain
and distributed ledger technology, while AI and ML are also seeing deployments in automated
trading and elsewhere.
In addition to providing an overview of the changes
occurring across the technology landscape, this Com-
modity Technology Advisory Disruptive Technology
Study was devised and executed to establish how the
wholesale commodities industry views these technol-
ogies, where and how they are being deployed, and to
try to ascertain the level of threat these new technol-
ogies may pose to existing solutions and applications
areas like CTRM software. ComTech conducted the
survey component of the study using a web-based tool
between December 2017 and early June 2018. Sur-
vey responses were encouraged through email, blog
and word of mouth efforts including an email from the
sponsor – FIS. The disruptive technologies survey had
82 valid participants with just over half of those being
located in Europe.
All types of respondent were welcome to provide their
views including vendor staff and in the end, the partic-
ipants were largely and almost equally balanced from
vendors or technology providers, Consultants and In-
dustry end users.
Overall, the survey seems to be somewhat balanced
in terms of the types of respondents; however, similar
to other recent surveys that we have conducted, it has
more Europe-based respondents than is perhaps rep-
resentative of the industry in general.
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