Smart Operation Center: The Muscle Behind The Smart Grid
- Are your Information Technology (IT) and Operations Technologies (OT) organizations insulated in separate silos?
- Will these organizations be able to work in tandem once smart grid technologies blur the lines between IT and OT?
- Does your utility have a strategy in place for bringing IT and OT together?
- Will you be ready to leverage data from millions of smart grid devices?
- Are your people ready for the disruptive changes smart grid initiatives bring?
Smart meters, smart homes, electric vehicles, distributed generation, storage, renewable, energy efficiency, demand response and more: If technologies like these aren’t plugged into your electric utility, they soon will be. And, one thing ties all these disparate technologies together. They all communicate via networks. Do you have a strategy in place to manage them?
Some of those networks, like those used in smart metering/grid/homes, will have millions of endpoints. Some, like the distribution management and SCADA systems that make smart grids self-healing and more efficient, will need data transport in real-time. Most of these networks will have different availability requirements, permissible latency and communications priorities.
Operations people know how to operate a simple legacy SCADA networks based on Frame Relays and/or Dedicated Lines, but tomorrow’s smart grids networks will bring complex, bi-directional communications networks into the mix. Running those kinds of communication networks takes IT expertise. That means IT and OT organizations must learn to work as partners. For most utilities, that brings up a host of change management issues.
Meanwhile, to operate the many smart metering and grid communication networks, some utilities are juggling a dozen or more operations centers, all using different personnel, equipment and processes. Imagine how much more efficient and cost effective it would be to bring management and operations of those networks into one comprehensive and purposefully planned network operations center (NOC).
A centralized NOC, or decentralized NOCs that use the same processes and tools, enables utilities to eliminate duplicated effort and simultaneously gain the responsiveness and accountability of a command center working under clearly defined service-level agreements. CSC has designed and built dozens of network operations centers around the world. Our consultants will bring industry-leading best practices to your smart grid NOC.
CSC Delivers Comprehensive Strategy for Seamless IT/OT Convergence
CSC’s Smart Network Operations Center Strategy provides a blueprint to bridge the gap between “as-is” realities and “to-be” targets for your NOC and the IT/OT convergence it enables. By working with CSC, you will realize benefits such as:
A capability maturity model: See an outline of initiatives to pursue that will incrementally lead your organization to its future and desired NOC state. CSC’s meticulous approach charts changes necessary in four focus areas: your organization, enterprise processes, tools and automation, and service level agreements.
Solution architecture: CSC will detail the business processes, automation tools and governance protocols to drive NOC performance in technical support, monitoring and diagnostic efforts, troubleshooting, security and more.
Timelines and cost projections: CSC charts the projects, foundational process changes and expenses associated with your unfolding NOC for a no-surprises implementation.
Risk and benefit assessments: Understand benefits ahead for your workers, your utility and your customers. Know how to realize those benefits and minimize the risks smart grids present.
A framework for transforming data into actionable intelligence: IT/OT convergence is crucial if you want to harness smart grid data for use throughout operations and other utility departments.
What Sets CSC Apart?
With more than 25 years of industry expertise, CSC’s Global Utilities Group serves many of the largest utilities in North America and some of the world’s largest power generation companies. Network operations center services are a key offering from CSC. We build them for our customers and for our outsourcing services, so we know how to build reliability into a NOC from day one. That’s one reason why CSC was identified as a “Leader” in the March 11, 2011, Forrester Research, Inc. report “The Forrester Wave™: Global IT Infrastructure Outsourcing, Q1 2011.” The report evaluated 19 global IT infrastructure management vendors across 36 criteria that included current offerings, strategies and market presence. We were also positioned in the “Leaders” quadrant of two Gartner reports, “Magic Quadrant for Data Center Outsourcing and Infrastructure Utility Services, North America” and “Magic Quadrant for Data Center Outsourcing and Infrastructure Utility Services, Europe.” The North American report, published on July 20, reviewed 17 providers of data center outsourcing and infrastructure utility services, specifically looking at their vision and ability to execute these services.
Plus, CSC is a world leader in security solutions. We’ve been developing them for the U.S. Department of Defense since the 1970s, so your network strategy will have security handled. And, our strategy will be standards based, drawing on both FCAPS and ITIL best practices.
Your network operations center won’t control the grid, but it will help you better operate your communication infrastructure. Get a network operations center as smart as the grid it manages with strategic assistance from CSC.
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