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Navita Systems, Microsoft Norway, and students at Østfold University College explore the possible use of Microsoft Surface technology in a wholesale energy trading environment
Published: 11.06.2010
Jeanette Evensen and Stian Farstad, B.Sc. students at Østfold University College in Norway, presented June 9 a prototype of a working Pomax ETRM system realized with Microsoft Surface user-machine interaction technology, and as part of a Navita Systems’ continuous commitment to explore and drive trading desk technologies of the future.
Microsoft Surface is a multi-touch product which is developed as a software and hardware combination technology that allows one or more users to manipulate digital content by the use of gesture recognition. It allows users to interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by placing and moving placed objects. The students’ work, which was part of a term paper titled ‘Enhancing global energy and emission trading with surface technology’, was supervised by Dr. Ky Van Ha from Østfold University College and was supported by Microsoft Norway, Navita Systems, and NCE Halden, a government-designated center of excellence in the area of energy and emissions trading.
Said Knut H. H. Johansen, CEO of Navita Systems: "While we believe there will be some time before surface technology will be widely used on the trading desk, the project compellingly demonstrated the business value of surface technology in a wholesale energy trading environment. Key characteristics of such trading processes include massive amounts of dynamic and numerical information, short opportunity windows, high decision speeds and density, highly coupled decisions, collaborative decision-making with structured workflows and authorizations, and extremely high cost of any error. A horizontal 30” Microsoft Surface seems to address some of these challenges much better than existing interaction paradigms typically based on a vertical multi-screen set-up with a mouse. This is not surprising, given that surface technology was originally developed for situation assessment and tactical overviews in military contexts, applications which share some of the characteristics of energy trading. We appreciated very much the fresh perspectives, stark insights, and high-quality work provided by students and faculty at Østfold University College and wish ‘our’ students the best in their professional career."
About Navita Systems AS
Navita is a premier provider of software and services to the global energy and commodity trading community. Pomax, Navita’s core product and a best-of-breed solution for energy trading, commodity trading and risk management, supports trading in electric power, gas, crude oil, coal, emissions / carbon, freight derivatives, weather derivatives, interest rates, currencies, and equities. While a true multi-commodity solution that can be configured for almost any set of energy, it has an extended functional footprint in the area of physical power and physical gas. Energy producers, energy consumers, trading houses, banks, hedge funds, and shipping companies the world over extensively use Pomax. There are today, more than 100 Pomax installations in Europe, North America, Australia and Asia. Customers include Abitibi, Bruce Power, Clarksons, DB Energie, EdF Trading, E.ON, Finotec, GdF, IMC Shipping, KS&T, Louis Dreyfus Armateurs, Mercuria, Navios, and Statkraft. Navita has an extensive network of implementation and solution partners. Navita is Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Oracle Solution Partner, and ThomsonReuters Solution Partner. Navita has offices in Los Angeles (US), Toronto (Canada), London (UK), Edinburgh (UK), Halden (Norway), Oslo (Norway), and Stockholm (Sweden).
For more information, contact: Grim Gjønnes, Dr. Ing., EVP, Head of Business Development, Navita Systems AS, grimg@navita.com, +47 934 01 002
