JEA's CIO: Focused on Flexibility
Wanyonyi "Wy" Kendrick, chief information officer at JEA, granted us an interview recently and her insights into utility IT issues may be of interest to readers.
We'll be taking a look at IT in the utility in coming weeks, particularly as it relates to operations and customer service. Those are the themes that Kendrick and dozens of her colleagues from around the country will be discussing at the upcoming Knowledge2010 conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., Nov. 8-10, hosted by Energy Central, Arizona Public Service and Salt River Project.
In the IT world, "flexibility" is enabled through software architecture, according to the CIOs I've interviewed lately. A quick observation from Friday's blog by Rick Nicholson at IDC Energy Insights might serve to set up Kendrick's comments on what's cooking at JEA.
"In the enterprise IT world the concept of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is well established as a means to integrate applications and automate business processes in a service oriented architecture (SOA)," Nicholson wrote. "An ESB does this by handling the orchestration of service requests across participating systems ... While familiar to most utility IT staff, this concept is just emerging in the smart grid market."
JEA is the nation's eighth-largest municipal utility, with more than 417,000 electric customers, plus water and sewer. It is exploring the possible applications of flexible IT architecture with the aid of a $13 million federal grant to enhance its IT system, install 3,000 smart meters, upgrade metering and data management infrastructure, conduct a dynamic pricing pilot and implement consumer engagement software.
I'll let Kendrick tell the story.
"'Flexibility' is where we're focusing," Kendrick told me. "[Our] pilot program [focuses] on service-oriented architecture (SOA), which we call 'eServices.' This creates components within our entire portfolio that can easily be presented for our customers for a plethora of reasons."
Currently, JEA has 12 essential systems critical to the operation of its business, Kendrick said. All those systems have point-to-point interfaces to them, some as many as fifty, which Kendrick characterized as "a tangled web." Today, information is not shared collectively by a central system, but that will change with eServices.
"eServices provides—over the long run, after you've deployed it for several years—the ability to build solutions that quickly react to regulatory needs, customers' expectations and internal customers' needs," Kendrick said. "It's a standardization of specific business information that can be presented for all those needs.
"For example, if we have a standardized billing eService component that a customer sees monthly, we can now use the same component in an application a customer call center representative will use to help the customer better understand their bill."
The eServices-related work includes the development of a customer-facing Web portal, which will provide billing and consumption information.
"Most companies are interested in communicating the right information as quickly as possible, therefore eServices is the best, next-step solution" for JEA, Kendrick said. "The telecommunication industry is known for providing meaningful information to customers for decision making and ... I believe the utility industry is moving in the same direction."
Telecommunications companies are competing based on information services, Kendrick added, and she envisions a similar scenario for utilities.
Service oriented architecture also will allow JEA to roll with the punches, should carbon-related regulations come into play, a possible scenario that is taken into account by JEA's ten-year plan.
A focus on service oriented architecture will prepare JEA "for whatever regulations come down the road and whatever twists and turns we encounter along the way," Kendrick said. "Right now, we are focusing on developing a stable platform allowing future flexibility."
Meanwhile, the utility will put eServices through its paces.
"Our pilot will focus on deploying the required infrastructure, training and eServices for the right, high-priority internal business needs," Kendrick said. "Our next phase will then include eServices for our customer portal."
Then, if eServices proves worthy of full adoption, the utility will build a business case for it and budget for expanding it.
My own knowledge of this area of utility operations is fledgling, at best. I invite readers to weigh in on related issues. Nicholson at IDC Energy Insights suggested one issue: can start-ups and small shops compete with the established integration platform companies?
I'm all ears.
Phil Carson
Editor-in-chief
Intelligent Utility Daily
pcarson@energycentral.com
303-228-4757
