SunGard Launches Commodity Suite

Energy traders can use Aligne to process energy financial and physical transactions across front-, middle- and back-office operations.

SunGard has launched Aligne, a service-oriented architecture (SOA) based, straight-through processing solution suite that helps energy companies optimize decision making and quickly adapt to business change by streamlining processes and integrating information across multiple business operations. Energy traders, utilities, midstream gas companies and large industrial consumers of energy can use Aligne to process energy financial and physical transactions across front-, middle- and back-office operations, and utilize configurable components for risk management and compliance.

Inflexible legacy systems, rising costs and inadequate technology infrastructures hinder growth, driving energy companies to seek new technology solutions from fewer vendors, according to a SunGard release. Aligne integrates functional components across SunGard’s suite of energy solutions and combines them in an SOA environment with business process management. Aligne gives customers flexibility to choose capabilities specific to business requirements, and includes new deal types, new functional modules, and new data management offerings. Aligne also allows customers to integrate other in-house or vendor applications, and provides an extensible, scalable infrastructure to help sustain business growth in terms of volumes and supported transactions types and commodities.

In addition, companies are under more pressure to address sustainability concerns and initiatives to reduce their carbon footprint through trading and inventory of emissions instruments, managing renewable energy transactions, and optimizing fuel mixes for lower emissions. Aligne helps companies conducting business in physical energy to achieve sustainability, growth and improved control by linking asset management, emissions management, real-time data and trading positions, the release continues. Aligne provides a data mart, advanced data cubes, library of standard reports, ad hoc reporting tools, and support for dashboards and online analytical processing (OLAP) queries to help customers gain the business intelligence to support commercial decisions. Aligne’s real-time alerts, messaging and dashboards help traders and mid-office personnel make informed decisions faster while maintaining the financial precision required for reporting.

Matt Mandalinci, president of SunGard’s energy solutions business unit, said in the release, “Streamlining the flow of information can help energy companies make better decisions faster, reduce costs, and achieve greater flexibility and control across the full range of enterprise commercial implications. SunGard’s Aligne helps companies to addresses their functional requirements across the energy transaction value chain using a single vendor; improve the flexibility and extensibility of their systems; and provide access to aggregate information across these systems.”