Cloud-based computing offers considerable benefits to trading and risk functions, and interest from the energy sector is growing. But migrating an entire energy trading and risk management (ETRM) system to the cloud is fraught with difficulties, and is not an exercise that many energy firms have seriously considered – until now, say consultants.

“Around five years ago, cloud was almost not in the picture,” says Sunilkumar Ramakrishnan, a London-based associate partner in IBM’s energy risk