Meet the 2011 Sponsoring Partners
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Technology and Application for Your Utility’s Future
Around the world, utilities are under pressure. Citizens demand energy and water that don’t undermine environmental quality. Financial stakeholders look for operational efficiency at a time when aging workforces and infrastructures need replacement. Regulators seek action on Smart Grid and Smart Metering initiatives that add intelligence to infrastructure. Customers seek choice and convenience—but without additional costs.
Pressures like these are forcing today’s utilities to re-examine every aspect of their business, from supply to consumption. And no utility can address these challenges alone.
Oracle has positioned itself as utilities’ software partner of choice in the quest to respond positively to these pressures. To do so, Oracle brings together a worldwide team of utility experts, software applications that address mission-critical needs, a rock-solid suite of corporate operational software, high performance servers and storage, and world-leading middleware and technology. The result: flexible, innovative solutions that increase efficiency, improve stakeholder satisfaction, future-proof your organization—and help your organization transform into a next-generation utility.
The Oracle Difference
End-to-End Solutions
Oracle provides utilities with the world’s most complete set of software choices. We help you address emerging customer needs, speed delivery of utility-specific services, increase corporate administration efficiency, and turn business data into business intelligence. Underpinning all these applications is Oracle’s world-renowned middleware and technology.
Choice
Oracle helps utilities address immediate problems while building toward a more cohesive, efficient IT future. You can begin with one best-of breed solution that addresses a specific pain point. Or you can implement several pre-integrated applications that ease the development and administration of cross-departmental business processes. You may also standardize on the complete Oracle applications and technology footprint to focus accountability and significantly reduce the resources you must spend on vendor relations.
Configuration, Not Customization
Customizing vendors’ off-the-shelf software is expensive, time-consuming, and uncertain. And once the customizations are in place, you have made it far more difficult and costly—or impossible—to upgrade the software as new market and regulatory requirements emerge.
Yet no two utilities operate identically.
Oracle solves this problem by letting you adapt software to your needs through configuration. During implementation, you make a series of choices that tailor operations to your precise requirements. And Oracle preserves those choices throughout multiple updates and upgrades. You get the cost advantages of off-the-shelf products with the operational efficiencies inherent in software that works the way you need it to work.
Integration
By basing all applications on an increasingly robust set of IT industry standards, Oracle makes it easy to integrate applications from any vendor. Your staff does not need to learn proprietary, potentially obscure languages or cope with complex and one-off procedures. Integrating Oracle applications with existing legacy or other non-Oracle packages is a straightforward process that helps make for faster implementations and smoother operations.
When you choose multiple Oracle applications, you receive, in a growing number of cases, pre-packaged integrations that ease the integration process even further.
As you implement and use a variety of Oracle applications over time, you will gradually migrate toward Oracle’s Applications Integration Architecture (AIA). This single platform for Oracle’s productized and standardized integrations reduces the time and cost of application integration, dramatically eases upgrading and testing,
and in general, helps lower total cost of ownership for the complete set of Oracle applications and technology.
Innovation
The speed of market change in the utilities industry puts a premium on technological innovation.
Because Oracle addresses database, middleware, and applications in a cohesive whole, our development teams quickly spot innovations in one part of the “solution stack” that can deliver benefits in others. Even before a technology innovation, for instance, is ready for general release, Oracle applications and middleware developers are updating their software so that it takes full advantage of the technology change.
The same applies to innovations in applications or middleware, which quickly spread to all parts of the Oracle Utilities offerings.
The result: New technology delivered quickly and seamlessly to serve your unique needs.
Partners
Oracle’s outstanding set of integration and technology partners supplement our products and services with vision and commitment that ensures you receive the very best that the software industry can offer, exactly when and where you need it.
Itron is the world's leading end-to-end solution provider to the global energy and water industries. We serve more than 8,000 customers across 130 countries and provide the critical knowledge, insight and technology that enable the responsible management, delivery and use of our precious water and energy resources. At Itron, we are dedicated to supplying flexible products and services for measuring, optimizing and analyzing utility information.
Itron is a trusted partner to the global utility industry—and through acquisitions and mergers, has been for more than 100 years. Throughout our rich history, we've designed products using our innovative technologies and extensive industry experience to deliver solutions that solve significant business challenges. Over the decades, Itron's innovation has transformed the way world-wide water and energy utilities manage their resources, streamline operations and serve their customers. Today, by combining high-end metering, advanced communications, powerful software tools and consulting expertise, Itron is uniquely positioned to help utilities meet the significant challenges facing the industry—from strains on supply and aging infrastructure to increasing populations and consumer demand—these issues require real solutions rooted in reality.
To help solve these unique industry challenges, Itron offers new thinking and proven products so that utilities around the globe can deliver fresh water and reliable energy to customers, while also engaging and empowering consumers to control their usage and costs. Itron's broad product portfolio includes electricity, gas, water and heat meters; data collection and communication systems, including, automated meter reading (AMR), advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), smart grid and prepaid metering solutions; meter data management and related software applications; project management, installation, and consulting services. Itron delivers strong value to our customers today, and our solutions will continue to ensure resource sustainability for generations to come.
Just as the challenges facing utilities in today’s marketplace are infinitely variable, so are our products and solutions. Itron offers utilities a mix of products to help them meet the pressing business challenges of today and tomorrow. Applying what we’ve learned from working on the leading edge of utility innovation for the past 100 years, we are building on our experience, global presence and breadth of solutions to help utilities shape their future – a smarter future.
Some of our key capabilities include:
- Intelligent electricity, gas and water meters, manufactured by Itron to reliably and accurately measure and provide usage information
- Data collection and communication systems, ranging from automated meter reading using handheld computers or mobile collectors mounted in vehicles to advanced metering network infrastructure to efficiently and precisely collect and transmit meter information
- Smart grid infrastructure and applications, modernizing the electricity grid to support distribution automation and renewable energy sources, and enable integration of electric vehicles and solar resources
- Prepayment solutions, designed with customer control and utility cash flow in mind, pre-paid metering provides the balance between customer use and electricity payment
- Meter data management and related software applications and analytics, providing robust and sophisticated tools to turn meter data into actionable information
- Professional services, offering knowledge, resources, experience and customer focus to help our customers install and operate their systems to gain maximum system performance and return on investment
From hardware and software to services and support, the breadth and depth of our portfolio is unrivaled in the industry, spanning the entire energy and water value chain. Regardless of the business challenge—whether it’s collecting more detailed and timely meter data or intelligently managing and analyzing it—Itron has a highly integrated suite of products and services to help utilities of all sizes and in all locations of the world prosper and thrive.
To know more about Itron, start here: www.itron.com.
Elster is one of the world’s largest electricity, gas and water measurement and control providers. With more than 200 million metering modules deployed over the course of the last 10 years, Elster has one of the most extensive installed revenue measurement bases in the world. It sells its products and services in more than 130 countries across electricity, gas, water and multi-utility applications for residential, commercial and industrial, and transmission and distribution applications.
Elster’s offerings include distribution monitoring and control, advanced smart metering, demand response, networking and software solutions, and numerous related communications and services – key components for enabling consumer choice, operational efficiency and conservation. Its products and solutions are widely used by utilities in the traditional and emerging Smart Grid markets.
As an innovative leader in the global shift toward intelligent grid infrastructure, Elster’s goal is to help utilities achieve operational and customer service initiatives through advanced technologies. Elster is helping to deliver the true benefits of the Smart Grid, such as voltage conservation, reduced feeder and line side losses, risk reduction and increased outage visibility into the operation of distribution components, all driving substantial cost and energy savings.
In addition, Elster adheres to open industry standards and protocols to ensure that its utility customers’ infrastructures are flexible and interoperable. In doing so, utilities are able to adopt multiple technologies in order to operate throughout varying geographic requirements and integrate with existing IT systems for billing, fleet management and more. Elster supports both private and public networks, depending on which network is better equipped to serve customers and the utility, as well as the utility’s preference and current Smart Grid initiatives. Elster is also highly committed to alleviating concerns around privacy and security, with NIST-approved encryption algorithms and modes for data integrity protection architected into the system, individual key management for each smart device, and more.
Finally, customer service is core to Elster’s business model and the company is dedicated to building vital connections with all of its utility customers. Elster clearly understands the equally crucial role customer service plays between the utility and end-users. The company believes that the best method for generating positive Smart Grid awareness and adoption is through improved communication to the customer, such as education on the benefits of remote connect/disconnects, the Smart Grid’s ability to enable faster response time to outages, flexible payment options and rate structures such as pre-payment and time-of-use (TOU) rates, and more. Elster has extensive experience partnering with utilities and third-party companies to ensure that customers have access to the numerous capabilities of advanced metering, helping to increase market awareness, acceptance and realize the full potential of the Smart Grid.
Telvent, with its advanced information technologies and innovative workforce, is focused on the Smart Grid to enable a more sustainable and secure world. The Company is not merely providing technology products, but is leading the industry with solutions for utility companies that are Complete, Interoperable, and Proven. Utilities who partner with Telvent are better prepared to face the challenges of the Smart Grid era, and support the mission of creating a more sustainable and secure world.
Telvent understands that the business of Smart Grid is both broad and complex, and provides advanced solutions that enable utilities to focus on local priorities while building a platform to grow with. The Telvent Smart Grid Solution has the most complete functionality of any available in the world, including:
- Building the Smart Grid data model – Utilities must have a complete and accurate data model of their distribution systems to enable Smart Grid functionality, and the ArcFM product from Telvent is the most widely used product of its kind in the utility industry. Utilities use ArcFM to create and maintain information about distribution networks, including initial construction designs and modifications made in the field. Using a spatial database, ArcFM is able to not only identify assets, but connectivity as well, which is critical information for Smart Grid operations and advanced grid analytics.
- Collecting critical data to drive Smart Grid Analytics – Telvent recognizes that data comes from many sources to drive Smart Grid analytics, and provides software to manage that flow of data. Telvent’s Conductor Meter Data Management System (MDM) is an advanced engine to manage the volumes of meter information collected. Telvent’s Saitel and Sage RTU’s (Remote Terminal Units) collect real-time operational data from the grid, which can then be transmitted to the utility’s SCADA system. Telvent’s OASyS SCADA then processes this data to deliver it to the advanced Smart Grid analytical software. Perhaps most notable is Telvent’s weather information provided by Telvent DTN, which enables utilities to overlay weather and forecasts to enhance Smart Grid operations and planning.
- Delivering Value Through Advanced Smart Grid Applications – Telvent leads the industry with advanced applications for Smart Grid, including Responder OMS (Outage Management System) and Advanced DMS (Distribution Management System).
Responder OMS is the critical application to help utilities manage reliability of service, and to respond faster when problems occur. Easily interfaced to all sources of data (meters, RTU’s / SCADA, telephone, etc.), Responder OMS also drives more optimal crew dispatch and provides complete outage and restoration reporting.
Advanced DMS is the most advanced analytical engine in the world for electricity distribution networks, and is by far the most widely accepted. The software not only provides State Estimation to ensure data accuracy, it also supports critical assessments to reduce operations costs, to apply a variety of demand response options, to support distributed generation and microgrids, and others. The software can also be used off-line to support planning of the distribution network, and to train dispatchers to manage a wide variety of situations.
Telvent also understands that while providing a complete solution, utilities have already made significant investments in software, and the Telvent software must be fully interoperable with these investments. Using modern information technology, Telvent works with the utility’s integration approach, and uniquely provides a real-time, high-speed data transaction approach for mission- critical data to reach the advanced applications in real-time. Telvent also understands that each utility will use the software differently, and therefore provides workflow software to enable groups within the utility to interact easily and positively with the Telvent Smart Grid solution. Further, utilities can make more effective use of the software and can create a more secure environment when workflow software is properly applied. Most important, our workflow technology enables utilities to maintain a “single version of the truth” reducing the effort and security issues when diverse databases are used.
Telvent software products that make up its Smart Grid Solution are in use in over 600 utilities all over the world. Our customers range from the largest in the world to smaller municipal organizations, and in virtually every size in between. With a track record of success in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, Telvent software has been tested and accepted across the globe.
With significant partnerships with ESRI (the most widely used spatial software in the world), Microsoft, SAP, OSISoft, OATI, and other technology companies, Telvent designs software to stand the test of time, and has continued to upgrade and advance the software to take advantage of updated technology and changes in industry regulation and standards.
Telvent – Technology solutions to enable utilities to manage in the Smart Grid era
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with approximately 211,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world's most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$21.6 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2010. Its home page is www.accenture.com.
About the Accenture utilities industry group The Accenture's Utilities group has more than 30 years experience working with electric, gas and water utilities worldwide. Our group includes 10,000 professionals working with approximately 275 clients in 40 countries. We work with 93% of the utilities on the 2010 Global Fortune 500 list, providing the deep industry knowledge, people and assets utilities need to develop the strategies and adopt solutions to improve performance in the dynamic energy market. We serve 40 million utilities end customers in North America and Europe, processing 60 million bills, reading more than 10 million meters and handling more than 8 million customer inquiries annually.
One of Accenture's key focus areas in the utility industry is in helping our clients with the transformation to a smarter grid. With 100 smart grid projects in over 20 countries, Accenture is at the forefront of the world's smart grid evolution. From generation to in-home energy management, from strategic blueprints to operational data analytics, and from the board room to the operations center, Accenture offers the world-leading expertise that utilities and their customers need to frame their vision of a smarter grid and then achieve its many benefits.
Accenture's comprehensive approach is built around a vision for enhanced environmental sustainability, improved network reliability, dramatically expanded customer participation in energy decision-making, transforming grid data into actionable intelligence, and providing the leadership needed to guide the business governance changes that inevitably occur with game-changing initiatives like smart grid.
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Build a Knowledge Infrastructure with GIS from Esri
Thousands of workers will retire from the utility industry over the next several years. Imagine all the wisdom and analytic power that will be missing when these workers retire.
The average age of U.S. utility workers is nearly 50 and more than 148,000 utility employees fall in the 55-to-64-year-old range, with another 26,000 employees over age 65, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A recent study published by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) showed that 61 percent of line superintendents are age 50 or older.
What many utilities are missing is an ability to capture as much of that knowledge as possible before experienced workers retire. The common denominator of that knowledge is location.
Utilities have been capturing facts in a geographic information system (GIS) for years. Today, GIS technology from Esri can capture observations and predictive information, collect data from all kinds of sources, and help utility staff make better risk predictions. GIS can create models that document the data sources, run analysis, and produce results in the form of a map.
The key is to have these models validated and supplemented by experienced workers before they leave, so that utilities can truly build a knowledge infrastructure.
Most utilities have collected an enormous amount of data that can be used for spatial analysis within a GIS. While traditionally GIS is used for making clearer maps of the electric system, it now serves as a framework and foundation for the knowledge infrastructure.
For utilities, this knowledge infrastructure is as much an asset as the actual pipes, wires, and hardware of the electric or gas system. The more knowledge a utility has about its assets, employee experiences, customer behavior, and the world around them, the better management decisions will be. This is where Esri can help.
Esriis built on the philosophy that a geographic approach to problem solving ensures better communication and collaboration. Esri develops geographic information system (GIS) solutions that function as an integral component to your utility.
GIS from Esri helps you answer questions and solve problems. When viewed in the context of geography, your data is quickly understood and easily shared.
GIS integrates hardware, software, and data for capturing, managing, analyzing, and displaying all forms of geographically referenced information. GIS allows us to view, query, and understand data in many ways. We see relationships, patterns, and trends in the form of GIS-based maps, globes, reports, and charts.
Utility operators need GIS to make the best decisions about key issues such as collecting data, managing smart meter and sensor installation, analyzing customer behavior, and incorporating renewable energy. When viewed in the context of geography, data is quickly understood and easily shared. Furthermore, GIS technology can be integrated into any enterprise information system framework.
For more information, please visit www.esri.com/electric
Utilities are extremely adept at collecting data from meters and other devices on the Smart Grid, but actually using that data poses immense challenges that Aclara is prepared to solve. As an AMI company, we understand that collecting data is only one half of the equation. Analyzing and presenting that data to both consumers and utility personnel is the other. That is why Aclara has developed the most comprehensive solution set in the industry for managing data and integrating solutions. Our solutions cover three areas – meter-data-management, consumer engagement, and integration consulting.
Our MDM Aclara is a proven industry leader in delivering meter data management (MDM) solutions to the utility industry that store and analyze any water, gas, or electric commodity data at any time period (daily, monthly or interval data). Our validating, estimating, and editing (VEE) process evaluates and corrects incoming meter data, ensuring that it is clean, complete, and actionable with high accuracy.
We also offer the standard and complex billing support that typical billing and CIS systems do not provide. We can process interval data in support of time-based rates that most billing systems can’t handle, obviating the need for specially designed “smart” meters.
The Aclara MDM deploys low-cost, low- risk solutions that deliver core meter-to-cash functionality, plus offer proven analytics to address a wide variety of business functions as a utility needs change, including AMI system health monitoring, theft, transformer loading, leakage, voltage monitoring, forecasting, and demand-response analytics.
In addition to MDM, Aclara offers utility customers out-of-the box customer portal applications that are easy to implement and maintained by Aclara staff through its hosted model. Our solutions, in place at over 85 utilities nationwide, have been proven to increase customer satisfaction and drive energy action by end-use customers. Billing data, energy efficiencies and AMI data viewers provide the core set of customer facing products, along with a full suite of products that can, like our MDM product, grow with the utilities’ needs.
Our Home Energy Analysis application provides customers with insights on their energy use and helps them explore ways to save. The energy portal offers ways to make low-cost changes like adding weather stripping, low-flow shower heads as well as provides insight into how new appliances can cut energy costs.
Lastly, with the skills sets available through Xtensible Solutions, Aclara can help utilities regain control of the data and information they use to operate and manage their businesses. Xtensible employs its Model-Driven Information, Integration and Intelligence (MD3i) framework to resolve the semantic differences among separate, diverse business systems so that data flows seamlessly between them. This approach encourages utilities to refocus information-technology purchases from tactical vendor solutions to strategic investments in enterprise information management. This not only saves money now, but it also provides an enterprise with future returns through greater leverage of information to gain operating efficiency across enterprise.
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The key to fully tapping the promise of the smart grid in the electric utility industry is highly secure and reliable communications—without that the data is, essentially, meaningless. One company that knows a great deal about providing such communication services is AT&T, and it is moving forcefully into this market, offering utilities a trusted provider to manage the backbone networks that will make the smart grid a reality.
AT&T already has teamed up with Itron, SmartSynch, Cooper Power Systems, Elster, Current Group, Petra Solar, and Silver Spring Networks to provide a suite of solutions for utilities looking to move forward with their smart grid installation plans. In this effort, AT&T is drawing on its industry-leading role in enabling highly secure 3G wireless communications to simplify the digital transition for the electric utility industry. With its crucial behind-the-scenes communications needs taken care of, the industry will be better positioned to complete the smart grid rollout.
The smart grid is often mistakenly thought of solely in terms of meter solutions. However, the smart grid encompasses the entire grid—it must be used to control and manage the grid, to communicate with customers about their usage, and to improve the utility’s environmental footprint. While the smart grid is starting with meter reads and outage information, it will soon progress to a two-way, interactive real-time relationship with an increasing amount of data to transmit and manage. The management, processing and storage requirements will create opportunities for AT&T to assist energy companies in meeting these goals. Toward this end, all of AT&T’s traditional products and services—highly secure communications over wireless and wired networks, data storage, hosting and network management— are ready to help meet this demand for secure communications and efficient data management.
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Landis+Gyr is the global industry leader in total metering solutions for electricity, gas, heat/cold and water for energy measurement solutions for utilities. Focused on quality, reliability and innovation, the Group offers a complete portfolio of energy meters and integrated smart metering solutions, enabling utilities and end-users to make better use of scarce resources, save operating costs and protect the environment by managing energy better.
With an installed base of over 300 million electricity meters Landis+Gyr is the premier global advanced metering solutions provider.
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Four out of the top 10 utility companies* use HP Exstream software to streamline customer communications and billing processes—all while cutting costs and automating regulatory compliance. Our market-leading customer communications management provides a single platform for creating all kinds of personalized communications—from high-volume residential bills and complex C&I statements to customer-focused marketing and interactive correspondence—and allows you to deliver them consistently through print, web, and many other customer channels.
HP Exstream accepts most any enterprise data input and sources, including record-based file formats, delimited files, XML, ODBC databases, legacy print files, messaging queues and many more. Additionally, HP Exstream provides Web Services and support for SOA architectures, Oracle CC&B, and SAP solutions. No other document automation solution offers this kind of flexibility.
For TransPromo applications, HP Exstream’s unique, robust features -- including whitespace and campaign management – are the best in its class. HP Exstream excels in high-volume environments and supports document design efficiencies that can save you millions of dollars in postage and paper costs. Capabilities like sorting and bundling, application consolidation, barcoding, and inserter control help you achieve maximum optimization. And HP Exstream’s high performance engine outputs documents as much as 10 times faster than alternative solutions.
Whether running in a high-volume, on-demand, or interactive environment, HP Exstream helps utility companies like yours reduce document development and production costs by as much as 80 percent, get to market with critical communications up to 85 percent faster, and deliver clearer, more relevant communications that improve customer satisfaction.
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Part of the Tata Group, which also separately owns several utilities engaged in generation, transmission and distribution, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is an IT services, business solutions and outsourcing organization that delivers real results to global businesses, ensuring a level of certainty no other firm can match. TCS offers a consulting-led, integrated portfolio of IT and IT-enabled services delivered through its unique Global Network Delivery ModelTM, that is recognized as the benchmark of excellence in software development.
In an attempt to reduce costs and improve operational efficiency, utilities continue to re-examine their business models. To succeed, they must align their IT investments with regulatory initiatives, emerging competitive landscape and growing environmental and sustainability concerns. In turn, IT organizations within utilities need to explore technology options and innovation that will deliver value to their corporations and end users alike.
As a strategic partner to utilities across the globe, we provide end to end services by creating a unique bundle of services encompassing engineering applications, infrastructure, business applications and process outsourcing. This unique bundle is delivered under a single governance framework which ensures complete ownership and risk optimization of the portfolio. Leveraging our industry insight and technology expertise, we have partnered with utilities organizations to deliver domain-specific solutions in the areas of customer service, smart grid, work and asset management, GIS, billing, sustainability programs and other similar areas. This has helped our customers to define and deploy business effectiveness improvement programs and be recognized as global leaders in the utilities industry worldwide.
For more information about our utilities experience, please visit here.
For additional information about sponsoring this summit contact your Energy Central account representative: sales@energycentral.com, Phone: 303.228.4752
