Trellis Energy Launches Agora, a Natural Gas Industry SaaS B2B Marketplace

Energy industry software provider Trellis Energy on Wednesday (Sept. 1) announced the rollout of Trellis Agora, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) B2B marketplace for the natural gas market.

Trellis Agora “provides the first consolidated platform where all supply chain participants, including producers, transporters, shippers, marketers, brokers, utilities and end-users, can converge to conduct mission-critical business across commercials, logistics, settlement and compliance,” according to the company announcement.

“Industry participants are struggling with aging and disparate systems, as well as business processes and data challenges across multiple providers,” said Archana Srivastava, Trellis’ chief product ofﬁcer, in the company announcement. “They are also lacking critical visibility into the market and their businesses.

“Trellis Agora brings all industry participants together into a single marketplace to transact seamlessly, eliminate inefﬁciencies, activate new business opportunities, and provide real-time analytics and tools to improve decision-making,” she said.

Launched Wednesday (Sept. 1), Agora features three hubs: Information Hub, Transaction Hub and Partner Connect. Each hub supports a specific aspect of the natural gas supply chain.

Participants can subscribe to whichever hub(s) they need and adopt emerging business trends through a cloud-based solution. Agora is also said to reduce overall IT and operational costs, optimize assets and increase revenue.

“Our goal is to transform the natural gas supply chain, enabling organizations to maximize their return on assets,” said Rakesh Agrawal, Trellis’ founder and CEO, in the company announcement. “The energy industry is migrating rapidly towards digital transformation and modernization. Trellis Agora is a pivotal technology supporting that evolution and is best positioned to positively disrupt the industry.”

Related: SaaS Startup Factors.AI Raises $2M in Seed Funding

SaaS is getting more attention than ever these days, as evidenced by a couple of recent announcements related to growth in that space. Startup Factors.AI raised $2 million in seed funding, which the U.S. and Bengaluru-based company will use to hire additional talent and continue establishing itself.

Factors.AI uses an artificial intelligence (AI) engine to comb through customer data to find insights, helping its customers make better campaign decisions and improving the return on marketing investments.

The announcement arrived at the same time that another AI- and machine learning-based SaaS company, Antuit.ai, was acquired by Zebra Technologies.