Managing the grey area with enterprise integration
GIS/Design Tools Trends
Similar to the OMS market, Engineering Analysis vendors provide a niche solution for distribution
and transmission departments. There are many small vendors in the industry offering these specialty
tools. GIS systems have traditionally provided facility data in a structured format to the Engineering
Analysis tool via an ASCII file interface-an acceptable approach that is still used. Nevertheless,
utilities are requiring a closer integration of these tools. At least one company in the industry has
made their analysis components directly available to GIS applications.
This companies calculation engines can be utilized directly in the GIS environment for such analysis
as load flow and short circuit. This is a major step in eliminating the need to share data via ASCII
files and provide for the user a seamless integration of GIS and Engineering Analysis.
GIS has historically done a poor job in providing a high-quality design tools for the utility industry.
In the last 10 years, GIS systems have been improved in this area with the addition of Compatible
Units (CU) and integration with WMS, but this has been of little help for the most demanding design
engineers. Similar to the Engineering Analysis market, small software companies have risen out of
the engineering services business to provide these specialty tools.
These tools have been notorious for being very expensive and make difficult integration partners for
the GIS vendors. Although this segment of the GRM market is lagging behind the other segments,
there is a trend to integrate these tools within GIS. As GIS tools are pushed to the field for front-end
design, this need will become more prevalent.
The questions for GIS vendors and their customers: How far do you go with the integration? Is it
worth the high cost of the design tool along with the price of the GIS seat? Each utility company will
have different requirements that will need to be weighed against the cost of the seat and its benefits.
No matter how far one goes with the integration of the tools, the industry is definitely moving toward
better integration of design capabilities.
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GRM includes enterprise access to facility data and operational status. A WEB
application provides the ability to post outage analysis, view facilities and
landbase, view crews, view outages, and request reliability reports such as SAIDI,
CAIDI, and SAIFI. |
The encompassing GRM environment provides the Dispatch and OMS applications software, the
geospatial enabling technology, and project management and implementation services to build and
deploy integrated solutions.
Software Systems Integrator
A utility can choose one of several methods to implement a GRM or ERP solution. The
first alternative is the best-of-breed approach, in which the company selects several
applications from various specialty vendors and attempts to assemble its own system.
Network
Analysis
The initial license fees with this approach are expensive, and the cost associated with the
integration and implementation processes are excessive. Moreover, the architectures of
the individual applications are different, the user interfaces are inconsistent, and the data
models overlap. Such system implementations are usually lengthy and sometimes never
reach completion.
A second alternative is to hire a systems integrator (SI) to assemble a custom system
from component products. This is the same as a best-of-breed approach, with the
addition of an SI to produce the customized system. The SI may have the skills to
assemble the system, but the component upgrade problem will still exist. The SI is not
the software manufacturer and cannot add features to improve integration or provide
product enhancements, product support, or training.
The third and most successful approach is one in which the software vendor acts as the
systems integrator. A GRM solution supplied by the software vendor who is also the
systems integrator (the software SI) will be successful precisely because the offering is a
configurable, integrated product rather than a collection of technologies, components, and
services. The software SI can deliver a GRM solution that offers broad functional
coverage, vertical industry extensions, and a robust technical architecture with training,
documentation, implementation, product enhancements, global support, and an extensive
list of software and services.
Many utilities have already taken an incremental step with creating GRM environments
with the implementation of a GIS system. Companies find, when they implement GRM
solutions, that they are able to reduce the time required to retrieve facility information
and eliminate redundant manual and digital datasets, saving time and money.
