Stephan Amsbary, HP January 20, 2006 Closing Panel Discussion: Mitigating Risk

Stephan Amsbary, HP January 20,

2006

Closing Panel Discussion:

Mitigating Risk

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It’s being done today• Learn from other utilities:−Pennsylvania Power &Light

• 1.2M meters

−Wisconsin Public Service• 1.6M meters

−Over 20M meters in USA

−ATCO• Over ten years experience

−Others

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Adopt similar industries best practices• Long-distance telecom mergers required

new approaches to maintain high-volume services while expanding offerings−Sprint, MCI

• High SLA/volume financial institutions−Stock market, credit-card & ATM applications

• High risk/SLA Healthcare −Clinical applications, Telemedicine (evolving)

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Learns Learned so far• There is no perfect turn-key answer− It’s a mix and match environment

−Field experience & COTS offerings are evolving

• Stick to standards−Don’t create yet another virtual “meter”

• Adopt a phased approach−Experiment with a couple of vendors to gain

experience

−Roll-out early deployment slowly: work out the bugs

• Supplier contracts should have “money back” clauses if they fail

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Technology Infrastructure• Ensure rock solid telecom infrastructure− Integrated monitoring and maintenance

−Leverage communications infrastructure intelligence when possible

• Choose best of breed COTS offerings−Avoid adding custom coding to standard

offerings

• Surround COTS offerings with an integrated “ever-present intelligent” framework

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“Ever-present” IT framework• Integrated “think-speed” response and

information delivery requirements:−Handle individual application outages

−Provide instantaneous disaster continuance

−Minimize COTS software package modification

−Minimize errors though simplified operational and integration complexity

−Extend COTS offerings through a SOA/SOE integration techniques/practices

−Provide absolute overarching application-wide auditability

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Select mature partners• Choose partnerships with tight cross

discipline integrated approach• Choose partners with experience−Experienced project team

−Partnership’s point-of-view aligned with Ontario’s Energy direction

−Partnership’s commitment to success• Willingness to share risk – “money back”

• Best of breed approach and integration

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Summary• Ontario’s bi-directional, Province-wide Smart-Metering

needs are evolutionary not revolutionary• Experienced, dedicated partnership is required• An “ever-present” IT and telecommunications

foundation is a critical component• Take time in a phased approach, problems can be

worked-out before impacting the next deliverable

• However:− Expect initial roll-out delays and problems

− Software packages are rapidly evolving to address requirements

− Acceptable fall-back: Existing process in Ontario works

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Contact

Stephan Amsbary

Hewlett Packard+1 704 544 9505

stephan.amsbary@hp.com