Future Energy Delivery Information Technology Design and Strategies: A 2005 Vision
Energy Delivery IT Systems in the 1990s
In the 1990s, IT organizations in most utilities oversaw internal system development, implementation, deployment and maintenance. IT and energy delivery organizations frequently debated the appropriateness, cost and timeliness of major IT projects and solutions. In most cases, 1990s energy delivery IT systems were architected and developed to support legacy business processes that were never reengineered in the transformation from manual to IT-assisted processes.
Most medium and large utilities implemented nonintegrated 1990s and prior generation energy delivery IT systems to support numerous key business functions. Examples included drafting and mapping of facility assets, short and long duration work management, distribution and transmission system planning, trouble call handling, and system outage handling and restoration. Many of these systems were built and implemented as custom-developed, silo systems. Needs for operational energy delivery data to support reliability analysis, regulatory reporting, maintenance management, customer service, sales, marketing, and other applications have frequently gone unmet or have been laborious, overly time-consuming activities.
Year 2000 Utiltiy Technology Approaches
As we begin the new millennium, increasing numbers of utilities are focused on the reengineering of business processes to support operational, engineering and maintenance activities across existing or merged organizational boundaries. Today, process reengineering almost always precedes the consolidation of energy delivery systems across these organizations, such that optimized work processes are defined as a requirements baseline for new energy delivery IT systems. Many major technology advances are affecting the business-appropriateness and the time required to complete energy delivery systems delivery and deployment. Key technology advances include software component engineering (based on the Component Object Model (COM), the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and Enterprise Java Beans), two- or three-tier client/server architectures, streamlined software engineering methodologies, and object relational database management technology that enables creation, storage, and maintenance of energy
delivery objects having spatial and nonspatial attributes. Cross-functional applications, such as integrated Geographic Information System (GIS)- and work-management-system-based graphical work design, optimize the reengineered energy delivery work design process and associated data creation, management, and maintenance.
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