Updata, Trayport Tighten Charting Linkage

Updata chief executive David Linton says the integration is "a breakthrough" for mutual clients migrating to or already using Trayport's Joule Direct SaaS platform, as it will enable them to seamlessly continue using their existing Updata analytics systems with Trayport's new platform.

"We have a lot of mutual customers, and, generally speaking, screen real estate is always an issue. It's nice that you can be in one application, and you can effectively link out to see analytics relating to that price in another application," Linton says. "Anyone who trades power or gas in Europe pretty much uses both of our products... [so] it just makes sense that the products are more integrated with each other."

However, for a long time, there was no formal agreement between the vendors, even though Updata has supported its analytics running on Trayport for more than 15 years. The vendors signed a collaboration agreement two years ago so that Updata would always be aware of─and be able to develop to─any system changes introduced by Trayport. "So this has been two years in the making to make our products run more nicely together," Linton says, adding that this has been key to allaying concerns among some clients who had been unsure of their abilities to migrate away from server-based client installations to the new SaaS technology introduced by Joule.

Linton says that what users primarily like about using Updata with Trayport is its compatibility with Reuters and Bloomberg. "A lot of people have Trayport as their energy trading screen, and then they'll have Reuters or Bloomberg for their exchange data, foreign exchange, etc., and Updata sits on both of them, so it brings those two data components together. If you're a trader analyzing energy spreads... you want forex, you want exchange products coming in on Thomson Reuters or Bloomberg, you want the Trayport over-the-counter prices, and then you want to mix and marry those together. On Updata, it means the charts you might be looking at are actually a combination of those two different venues coming into one place─that's why a lot of users use it."