Does your IT strategy maximise the potential of your existing investments?

IT strategy within Utility companies needs to sweat existing investments, whilst building flexibility for the business to adapt to a commoditised marketplace. CTOs and IT strategists need to work within tight budgetary control, whilst responding to increasing business demands for agility and responsiveness. As enterprise organisations, the typical ‘go to’ technology vendors for Utilities have been the likes of IBM, Oracle and Sun. Although Microsoft has been an accepted part of the IT landscape for well over a decade, it is still treated as ‘just the provider of Windows and Office’.

Why this is important
But the world has moved on...Today’s Microsoft offerings can form the foundation of an IT strategy that delivers innovation and maximises the potential of existing investments. Leveraging their own .NET development platform, Microsoft has produced a ‘stack’ of class leading products that embrace the concept of doing more with less, whilst driving IT forward into tomorrow’s globalised marketplace.

Utility IT Environment Utility companies use a variety of IT systems to support their operations, including real-time energy trading, work management, customer billing, customer service, meter point administration and the management of system assets. These specialised systems sit alongside common business support applications like call centre management, finance and HR. The late 1980's and 90's saw a number of these IT systems being re-provisioned away from their mainframe roots, capitalising on the value proposition offered by UNIX platform vendors. This re-provisioning took place alongside the emergence of the desktop computing model, driven by IBM and Microsoft.

The most recent sea change influencing utilities companies was the process of deregulating the UK electricity market in the late 1990’s. Giving customers the freedom to switch between suppliers forced significant investment in IT systems that would support this process. Since the implementation of these systems, investment in IT has been tightly controlled and apportioned between core business systems, desktop capability and the underlying fabric of the network infrastructure.

As the UK utility market has become commoditised, the vendors in the market are under pressure to realise value through operational efficiency, whilst striving to retain and extend their share of a finite market. These pressures drive a need to make effective use of IT and sweat value from existing system assets.
 
Microsoft's 'stack' of products and technologies can offer an attractive cost to capabilities ratio. Extending the use of Microsoft solutions, beyond just the use of Windows and Office, into a key pillar of Utility IT strategy can deliver new capabilities that bring the most out of existing investments.

Utility IT Challenges
Businesses are challenging IT departments to respond more rapidly to changing market conditions. These challenges are made within an environment that only sanctions significant IT spend when it’s aligned to a business case that demonstrates timely financial or operational benefit.

Alongside emerging business challenges, IT budgets must also 'keep the lights on' by providing core ICT capabilities. It is possible to deliver 'more with less' by extending the use of Microsoft offerings beyond just the ubiquitous Windows and Office products. However, to realise these benefits, it is vital to understand the capabilities of this stack of products and technologies.

This understanding can best be developed by answering four key questions:

• What core Utility ICT functions are implemented using Microsoft technologies? What do we mean by a Microsoft stack?
• How can Utility companies leverage investments in the Microsoft technology stack?
• What is the advantage of using the Microsoft stack rather than extending investment in IBM, SAP or Oracle?

Answering the Challenges
Q: What core Utility ICT functions are implemented using Microsoft technologies?

Let’s start by looking at the Microsoft software most frequently deployed within a Utility company. On the desktop, we typically see a Windows operating system. Deployed versions range from the 'legacy' NT4 workstation all the way up to Windows XP service pack 2. Productivity software is generally either IBM’s Lotus Notes or a version of Microsoft Office. Where Office is deployed, it is normally tied into a server side deployment of the Exchange e-mail product. In the server space, it is common to see core file, print and directory features implemented on a version of Windows Server.

So, Microsoft technology is already widely used within Utility organisations. It is the environment that end users see when they turn on their computers in the morning and look through their email. It is also the reliable and cost effective server infrastructure that enables core login, file, print and messaging services.

Q: What do we mean by a Microsoft stack?
In the late 1990’s, Microsoft sought to extend its position on the ‘desktop’ by building a set of robust New Technology (NT) server products. At the core of this enterprise infrastructure platform is the Windows Server, SQL Server and Exchange Server platform of products. Combined with a robust set of operational management and deployment tools, these products gave Microsoft the right to play in the server rooms of true enterprise scale customers.

During this progressive move into the enterprise space, Microsoft were challenged by the rapid uptake of the Internet. In the now famous ‘about face’, the Redmond based giant managed to re-align the direction of its product development teams, focusing squarely on the opportunities presented by a world that was being rapidly connected through Internet technologies. One of the most significant shifts in thinking to emerge from this change of direction was the complete re-working of Microsoft’s various development tools and languages, culminating in the release of the .NET development platform. Released as the Internet ‘.COM’ bubble was about to burst, .NET offered companies an attractive proposition of reduced development times, greater efficiencies and the premise of a development platform that had the principles of the Internet (SOAP, XML and web services) at its very core.

So Microsoft had an enterprise class of Infrastructure products, an established position on the desktop and a powerful, readily adopted and increasingly popular development platform. Leveraging these products and capabilities into an integrated ‘stack’ was the next move for Redmond……Building on the strength of the .NET development platform and the core Windows System, Microsoft progressively built out a stack of products that competed with the offerings from IBM and Oracle.

The Microsoft product stack that we have today provides for core infrastructure, systems management, security, database and middleware, application development, information management and collaboration.

The common thread for the product components of the stack is that they are designed to play well together, being built upon .NET. This strategy of ‘grow your own’ products instead of just buying up the competition has resulted in a stack whose products actually talk to each other (much to the chagrin of IBM websphere integrators). So, the Microsoft stack comprises products like Windows Server, SQL Server, Exchange, Windows and Office. It spans the breadth of the IT estate to provide world class client, server and development products and platforms.

Q: How can Utility companies leverage investments in the Microsoft technology stack?
When treated in isolation, the individual applications that make up the Microsoft stack offer a fantastic combination of features, performance and low cost. However, when joined together the entire stack becomes much greater than the sum of its parts. Operational efficiencies can be derived within the infrastructure, development and business communities, whilst the business can finally move towards the oft promised vision of flexibility and responsiveness to changing market conditions. This need to deliver flexibility and agility on top of existing business IT systems has driven up the hype around ‘service enablement’. This concept seeks an alternative way to integrate disparate IT systems, without the ‘rip and replace’ or ‘rip and consolidate’ strategies of the 1990’s.

Essentially service enablement allows system functions to be re-used within many applications through a layer of XML and web services. This makes processes much easier to modify quickly and gives the business greater agility in responding to changing process requirements. In the emerging globalised marketplace, business service flexibility is the key that unlocks opportunity for process outsourcing, co-sourcing, home-sourcing etc. Built on the core ‘service enabling technologies’ of XML and web services, the Microsoft stack comes alive when joined together to drive a business towards service enablement. Deriving the maximum value from Microsoft’s offerings means joining together the stack so that it spans the business from infrastructure to key business processes. Integrating the IT for client machines, server based systems and across development departments starts to simplify the overall IT estate, delivering greater operational efficiencies within a reduced cost model.

Q: What is the advantage of using the Microsoft stack rather than extending investment in IBM, SAP or Oracle?
Each of the main IT stack vendors have offerings that provide end to end technology for service enabling a business. IBM and Oracle have similar approaches that leverage derivatives of Unix and Java platforms.

Microsoft and SAP differ from IBM and Oracle in the way that end users interact with business processes within a service enabled business. Where IBM and Oracle both major on expressing end user interfaces through browser based 'portals', Microsoft and SAP both provide options for leveraging Microsoft's heritage of 'rich client' solutions that build upon the inherent features of Microsoft Windows and Office products.

Beyond the .NET / Java discussion, the options available within a stack for constructing end user interfaces are key to selecting vendor offerings. SAP has recently begun to surface ERP 'business functions' through Microsoft Outlook. Microsoft itself extends this proposition to the nth degree, leveraging the power of .NET, Windows and Office to provide end user interfaces through browsers, Office or custom developed 'SmartClients'.

For a utility company, accessing the capabilities of existing systems within a user interface framework with the familiar look and feel of Windows and Office, begins to lift the value of the Microsoft ‘service enabling’ stack above and beyond its rival offerings. When you add in the low cost of ownership and broad availability of skills, the platform selection becomes even more attractive. Summary Microsoft is one of the main global IT vendors that has an end to end stack of products, with class leading products and development platforms.

The vision for their products is to empower every business and end user with the potential to participate in the joined up world of globalised business processes. Leveraging the strength of .NET and the familiarity of Windows and Office, the Microsoft stack lifts itself above the competing technologies of IBM, Oracle and SAP. As Utility businesses look to sweat existing assets and maximise value, Microsoft becomes the leading proposition for IT strategists.