White Papers Is Now the Time for Open Source in CTRM | Page 7

Is Now the Time for Open Source in CTRM?

A ComTech Advisory Whitepaper

HOMEGROWN SOFTWARE
MAKING A COME BACK?
As buyers realize that perhaps there simply isn’t a packaged solution that will fit the majority of their complex
requirements, homegrown development is once more gaining in popularity; especially among larger companies in
areas like agriculture and softs where there are a plethora of niche solutions but few that can meet the specific
requirements of a shop that trades a broad range of commodities.

The trend has been confirmed by head hunters who
tell us there is a great job market developing among
the companies that have turned to in-house development to meet their specific needs. While these companies can find specific point solutions to address
individual commodities or classes of commodities,
they have little confidence that a vendor supplied
solutions will meet their requirements.

To some extent, this trend can be seen as a
step backwards, swapping lower cost and increased

convenience for a better fit to requirements. Certainly, it is not an option
open to the vast majority of companies that in one way or another trade
commodities and require a solution. Arguably, the market is growing
as regulations in particular net increasingly smaller commodity traders
who in the past may have been more than happy to rely on spreadsheets or some other cost effective, but difficult to audit, approach. In
this regard, cloud-based and other non-traditional deployment options
are likely to be very attractive.

BUT OPEN SOURCE?
So what would happen if we all simply recognized that every customer is different? What if the “industry”, both
users and developers, launched an open source library that everyone contributed to? Would this work? Would it
spell the death knell of the vendors in the space?

In effect, the industry has at times, perhaps unwittingly, flirted with this model via industry consortia
such as EFETnet in Europe and GISB in the USA.
However, none of these efforts actually resulted in
open source applications being developed.

While an open source CTRM may seem unlikely at least in the near-term, we suspect that such
a model could result in a number of positive developments for users, including faster development of

© Commodity Technology Advisory LLC, 2014

new and richer functionality, the ability to better interface and integrate
with other applications and potentially the development of new, industry-wide capabilities such as standardized and efficient networks for
deal exchange, confirmations, scheduling and settlements. The most
agile and forward thinking vendors would continue to thrive by assembling branded applications that build upon the open source core capabilities, and could better differentiate themselves from their competition
by focusing on delivery of sophisticated tools and analytics.