Triple Point have announced two new deals with European energy firms and there are strong rumors in the market that the number is actually three deals with one, as yet, unannounced. The announced deals are with Nidera and SOCAR.

Nidera Handelscompagnie B.V. is a privately held, international trading and agribusiness company with strong traditional roots in Europe and Argentina. Founded in 1920 and headquartered in Rotterdam, Nidera's main activities include the trading of grains, oilseeds, vegetable oils and meals; feedstuffs, rice and ocean transport. Other related activities include the operation of elevators and processing plants as well as products for the bio-energy sector. In January, Nidera licensed Triple Point's Commodity XL for Agriculture to more efficiently manage its commodity trading and industrial operations and to gain a real-time, enterprise-view of exposure and risk.

Socar Trading, based in Geneva, was set up in February 2008 to market Azeri crude and refined products throughout Europe. Socar required a real-time system to consolidate information and manage trading and risk across the enterprise. In addition, it required a logistics solution to facilitate the physical movement of crude oil via vessels and pipeline, along with gasoline by railcar.

The final deal is rumored to be for a Triple Point/SAP platform solution and we will post more details if and when they are forthcoming. This comes on the back of a license extension at ConocoPhillips reported on the ETRM Blog a few weeks ago.

Plainly it is going to be a happy Christmas for Triple Point.

Two years ago, when UtiliPoint conducted a benchmark vendor perception study in Europe, Triple Point lagged the other major vendors (OLF, SunGard and Allegro) in brand recognition here. At the time, Triple Point acknowledged to us that their European presence was less than they desired and the company made a number of moves to rectify the problem bringing in a heavy weight manager to run the European operation. Last year, Triple Point became SAP Oil & Gas's chosen partner for trading and risk management software as well. It will be interesting to see where Triple Point's brand perception is at in the ongoing rerun of the Vendor Perception study. But based on recent history, it is likely to be significantly higher than it was two years ago.