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Page 2 >> Editor's note: This is the first of a three-part smart enterprise series for Smart Grid News by GTM Research senior analyst Chet Geschickter, who authored The Smart Utility Enterprise 2011-2015: IT Systems Architecture, Cyber Security and Market Forecast. Chet will discuss the report and field questions on smart grid utility enterprise technologies and markets in a free webinar on Sept. 29. Click here for more on the report and webinar.
By Chet Geschickter
Enterprise architecture is largely an overlooked discipline. The heroes of the IT world deliver new applications fast and cheap. The catch phrase is “on time and on budget.” There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as the deliverable provides business value (not necessarily a given) and so long as implementation decisions don’t cut corners that cause problems later on. And there’s the rub. The fast way may not be the best approach for the long term.
However, enterprise architecture pops to the top of the list of key smart enterprise enablers. Why? Two words: composite applications. Simply put, composite applications are applications built from pieces of multiple applications. And this is exactly what smart grid seeks to do. Distribution automation, for instance, uses components from SCADA, outage management and network management. Another example is dynamic pricing, which melds a hodge-podge of functionality from meter data management, customer information systems, billing engines, load forecasting and more to create an end-to-end business process that begins with identifying an upcoming peak event and ends with bill presentment.
Page 2: The case for service oriented architecture >>
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