Role of EAM Packages in Smart Grid - Part 1
In many of my recent Work and Asset Management proposals - particularly in utilities, I see a trend of every client requirement mentioning work and asset management functions to be integrated with their GIS, mobile, condition based monitoring etc in addition to omnipresent financial functions. While most of the utility clients, I have seen, have been using all of these applications but they do not have them integrated. Clients have some standalone GIS systems having its own asset master and asset management package having its own, not talking to each other. Mobility solutions would have some sort of integration but not leveraging benefits fully. List is long - some of these applications are CIS, OMS, Meter management etc.
Now Smart Grid initiatives are making clients moving forward to have a real time integrated view of all of their applications and take smart and informed decisions. Hence integration among all these system becomes imperative for a successful smart grid solution.
Integration has its own challenges. Making any two entities talking and working cohesively is one of the most complex tasks - be it two software applications or two groups of people or two divisions in an organization.
A sizable utility company has plenty of software applications to manage its operations. Integrating these diverse software applications require tremendous efforts and a visionary approach. While, Infosys' utilities group has been working on developing such a Common Information Model based framework which will help clients in integrating their applications in a much easier way; I happen to talk to an analyst from a leading global research firm on initiatives taken by utilities. That analyst also had the same view citing that a single, dynamic view of data coming from multiple sources is the top-most priority of utilities in addition to master data management and integration of OT & IT data.
While, we continue our journey of making our client's applications smart by letting them talk to each other, we also need to worry about the magnitude of data residing in these applications - which is duplicate often. One such example is asset register in GIS and EAM applications. More on this in next blog.
