Is SOA (Service-Oriented-Architecture) top of mind for Utilities?

I’d have to guess a big “Nope!” For those of you that know me… I was involved in the early days of J2EE/Application Server craziness and then the next wave of early days SOA – so this post comes from the heart! SOA was the next “Big” thing to hit enterprise IT after the app server. The allure of loosely coupled and re-usable “services” that could be quickly assembled into “composite applications” to address the needs of the agile business users within the enterprise -  sounded great!  And we all thought that “services” would take over the world! Even Gartner Group was hot on the topic! Key events were held each year for the early adopters of SOA  – to gather and hear wise and privileged secrets as to how best start implementing services and becoming “service-oriented”.

Sounds great eh? Well, the only problem was that everyone thought it was easy. And we thought it would happen FAST! Everyone involved had just come off the .dotcom era of fast buy, quick deployment, and a “do everything/anything” to get new applications launched! Money flowed freely – and water-tight ROI’s were as solid as the business plans that a lot of start-ups during that time were built on! In the end.. no surprise – things crashed and everything slowed down. It was about this time – that we (software vendors) decided the next thing to sell to over-bought-software stacked customers was a new “architecture”! Enter SOA!

I am a fan of architectures, don’t get me wrong. Like a map, a blue print, a template, or a a guide – they tell you what the big blocks are, how they fit together, what needs to talk to what, and what the communication protocol should be.  The missing link to any architecture though in my humble opinion is “TIME!” Architectures are not 3 dimensional in that there is no Z-axis to highlight a time line that it takes to actually implement. And this is where SOA went off the rails… everyone failed to realize how long a process it would take for enterprise to:

• Understand SOA…
• Determine the requited existing/lacking skills sets that would be required
• Designate the “SOA” Champion or Group of Champions to lead the transition
• Assess internal environments to determine what core functions could be exposed as services
• Gain support for internal pilots – both in time to investigate and funds for seed pilots
• Map pilots to useful business use cases – which had deployment ROI attached
• Engage early SOA vendors to roll pilots, learn, re-align strategies and goals
• Battle the myriad of standards that cropped up -> ws*.* nightmare
• And finally create services, create repositories, creates policies, create simple 2-3-4-5 services based applications

Do you feel the pain my friend? I sure did!

So where am I going on this SOA bandwagon with respect to the current Smart Grid, Smart Cities and Smart-Wannabe-Utility companies? They are going to be faced with the same challenge that the enterprise was faced with 10 years ago. And it is “smart” if we all understand that it is going to take time and talent to make all this “smart” stuff work. If you look at the above TC57 Reference Architecture [EPRI - Harmonization of CIM with IEC Standards: Draft Report ] I feel like we are headed for the “Perfect Storm“! Is this architecture scary? Not really… let’s see what EPRI is up to…

EPRI has sponsored development of a number of international standards that provide the basis for information exchange to support power system management. One of the most important is the Common Information Model (CIM), which is rapidly gaining acceptance throughout the world as a common semantic model to unify and integrate data from a myriad of systems involved in support of real-time electric utility operations. As its acceptance as the basis for information integration grows and areas of application expand, it has become increasingly important to ensure that other standards used for the sharing of operational data are harmonized with CIM. Standards include the Utility Communications Architecture (UCA) standards for architectures and interfaces within substations and distribution feeders.
This report, the first in a series dealing with enterprise-wide harmonization, describes the work accomplished to date in achieving this desired harmonization. The report analyzes the most important standards to identify commonalities and differences that need to be harmonized and identifies specific areas where additional work is needed. Recommendations for a harmonized future reference architecture and specific actions needed to resolve existing differences to achieve an enterprise-wide unified information infrastructure are presented.

Web services will play a role within this architecture. ESB’s (Enterprise Service Bus) will start to pop up although maybe they will be called Utility-Service-Buses! The fact is plain and simple – the utility back-end needs to change in order to accommodate the new technologies and applications that the Smart Grid will require to operate and properly service end-user consumers.  (I haven’t even touched on HAN – and all the home consumer apps that will also spring up…)

The good news is that SOA has matured, talent pools are available, and the F1000 enterprise helped all the SOA vendors shake down their products and capabilities. The one factor though that still remains a challenge – is time.

This change my friends will take some time… so the next time you are with a Utility prospect and someone says “SOA” – please buy that a person a beer!

They are the next-generation champions!

Power to the Smart Grid Vendors!

It’s impossible to create change without smart and dedicated vendors to make it happen – spoken like a true sales person!

If you have ever sold or been exposed to the sales process behind selling “infrastructure” – the transformation of the grid represents one of the most distributed, complicated and challenging landscapes that exists today! Meter counts can be in the millions, there is no “standard” neighborhood, and the control infrastructure behind the scenes varies like Monday night prime time on Fox TV! For both the IOU and Public Utility companies – this is a massive undertaking! Existing power and control infrastructure has been in place for a long, long time – so it’s like trying to go back and re-instrument and add real-time telemetry to some pretty rigid equipment. Sure, at the meter level – rip and replace works well – but on the back-end of power distribution – that is not necessarily a viable option. If you are a utility person – does the “Smart Grid” give you a headache?

The $3B+ plus funds that are available for change – certainly helps reduces the “financial” headache for the utility companies – and as long as they don’t try to pass on too much of the remaining delta to the consumer – I (as a consumer) don’t have a headache either. At the consumer level, if utilities can provide additional functionality, and I can save money, then I have a a tangible home ROI and I’m ahead of the game. That is a good thing!

If the financial assistance is there – then why is Smart Grid such a process for the Utilities? The answer: It is a distributed infrastructure that is very complex!!! And it now needs to leverage technologies and standards that might not be that familiar to the parties who are starting to drive these efforts. Oh, and did I also mention that the standards are still somewhat in flux? An example of this complexity is highlighted on the NIST Home >  Smart Grid Interoperability Standards Project

Effective interoperability is built on a unifying framework of interfaces, protocols, and the other consensus standards. These standards facilitate useful interactions so that, for example, “smart” appliances and meters will tell consumers how much power they are using and at what cost, providing them with more control over their power consumption and energy bills. Widely adopted standards also will help utilities to mix and manage varying supplies of solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources and better respond to changing demand.

Starting to see how detailed and involved this market sector is? When you read about “interfaces, protocols and consensus standards” you know you’ve got some homework to do! Sure you can Google “Smart Grid IPV6″ or “Grid Mesh Networking” but there exists a collection of experts with opinions, solutions and support to help the utilities accelerate their learning curve and feel confident in initiating a Smart Grid project (or sub-project as there are many “definitions” as what actually is a Smart Grid). Who are these experts you ask?

Let me proudly introduce the Smart Grid Ecosystem of Vendors! On the above image, we see the same multi-layer architecture as before, but now mapped with the vendors offering expertise and solutions in each grid area. What you see is a mix of early stage, later stage and very well established top-tier companies – each providing a piece of the puzzle or in some cases an end-end solution. Based on what area of Smart Grid you are thinking about… which is most likely starting with FAN/AMI ( which just happens to be the more congested box in the image) there are a variety of great vendors in the market to help you get started. Let me zoom in on this box and make it easy for you…



Lots of great information, white papers, and video’s exist on these vendor websites to help anyone better understand the importance of the Smart Grid, and the enabling technology that exists to help make it a reality.

Love your Smart Grid vendor today!

[Note: My source of this image is GTM's excellent Smart Grid report which served as the basis for my previous post.]

Ever watch that TV show “Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?” It features Jeff Foxworthy (who actually is a pretty funny guy and a perfect host for the show) and has everyday folks and celebrities battling it out with 5th grade students to see who is smarter. Some of the questions are tough – some are easy…

So how would you feel if yopu were on that show and someone asked you to describe the Smart Grid? Maybe the answer is not so easy eh? – which is why I like this picture above. It covers the Smart Grid end-end via 4 simple layers:

• Power layer
• Communication Layer
• Smart Grid Applications layer
• Enterprise/Consumer layer

[Note: I need to remember where I found this in THE SMART GRID IN 2010: MARKET SEGMENTS, APPLICATIONS AND INDUSTRY PLAYERS DAVID J. LEEDS | GTM RESEARCH report. Download this excellent report by clicking on the link...]

I’ll be adding to this post over the next few days…and will drill on on the various layers as described with comments and perspectives…If you click on the picture – you can see a larger version which might be a little easier to read.

The communication layer I am particularly a fan of – as we explore FAN/AMI – Field Area Network/Advanced Metering Infrastructure which includes mesh networking. Staring to see my intersection with Smart Grid now?

Did a little deeper on AMI and Wikipedia says:

Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) refers to systems that measure, collect and analyse energy usage, and interact with advanced devices such as electricity meters, gas meters, heat meters, and water meters, through various communication media either on request (on-demand) or on pre-defined schedules. This infrastructure includes hardware, software, communications, consumer energy displays and controllers, customer associated systems, Meter Data Management (MDM) software, supplier and network distribution business systems, etc.

Measure, Collect and Analyze. It seems to be what I’ve been living my life on the past few years! Reminds me of the old Build, Deploy, Manage – which pertained to the software application world, and has really evolved to Provision, Deploy, Consume – thanks to Cloud Computing and SaaS!

A Smart Grid need smart data. Data collection and aggregation is key – otherwise you have the garbage in/garbage out syndrome and an unimpressed utility or worse yet -> consumer. IP seems like a happy way to suggest integrating all of these devices – sounds like the data center situation doesn’t it? A smart data center to me is just an extension (or vice versa) of the Smart Grid. It deals with main power distribution, peak/load demand issues, various networking topologies (LAN/WAN/Wireless), mixed meter infrastructure and of course, an array of various applications for consumption, cost, efficiency metrics, and over all state and  health.

Smart Grid is hot right now so you need to have a quick answer (in case you are challenged by a 5th grader!) so back to Wikipedia for a quick Smart Grid definition:

A smart grid delivers electricity from suppliers to consumers using digital technology with two-way communications to control appliances at consumers’ homes to save energy, reduce cost and increase reliability and transparency. It overlays the electricity distribution grid with an information and net metering system.

Got it? Simple?

Of course the “control” aspect might have a few folks up in arms… consumer behavior might need to be updated as we progress further with Smart Grid deployments. We just need to be smart about it and not ruffle too many feathers in the process…

Thanks to the on-time efforts of United Airlines, I arrived in good spirits in Shanghai last month! Now of course this business visit would not have been complete without a visit to the 2010 World Expo that was taking place there. I think the last World Expo I was at was in Montreal back in 1967, and I doubt at that time if I was even 3 feet tall! The Shanghai Expo was gigantic! I arrived around noon time, with light rain falling (small umbrella’s only so you don’t poke the eyes out of your fellow visitor) and after 2 hours of walking, getting lost and soaked – I had a big headache! So – what does a Westerner do when he is feeling beat? He looks for something familiar – which in this case turned out to be the USA Pavilion! Actually this was a good pick – since most of the lines (or queues as they are called there…) were averaging 3-4-5-6-7 hr waits just to get in! The USA wait was only about an hour – which I figured was survivable. Here’s a quick pic of the pavilion… nice logo!



Of course, a picture is with a thousand words – bit a video rocks! As I sat in the back of the USA Pavilion – I couldn’t help but pull out my little Canon camera and and capture a few interesting snippets of the 3-screen presentation that was taking place.  I wish my camera could capture HD – next trip I will upgrade!  So back to energy and sustainability for a moment – it was very interesting to all of a sudden hear this video and the bullets that rang so close to my background of energy management/sustainability. Have a look…

Very interesting indeed! So what did we just hear?

• Imagination is essential!
• You need to be able to image a new world in which you have new sources of energy
• Wind energy currently supplies 20% of China’s energy
• Sustainability is about providing technology or know-how that when you apply it and walk away – it is still working!
• It’s our mission that the next generation comes into a caring environment!

The overall theme of the various presentations was “education” with an angle towards energy, sustainability and the concept of a new world that we can all help shape. It certainly hit home with me – the fact that you have the next generation thinking in these terms is simply fantastic! I left the Pavilion feeling proud and excited that “Green” was definitely the “In-thing” and we were letting the ROW know this.

Nice job my fellow Americans!

It’s always fun to go places!

You get to see and hear different things, and meet people who are very unique and offer very interesting perspectives and opinions. I’ve been a little slow writing this post since I’ve been traveling – and I finally have some down time as I wait my delayed flight to Beijing, China. The last 2 weeks were a hectic schedule – with numerous dinner meetings in Shanghai and dealing with the hot weather that China is currently experiencing.  Not that this blog post is about China (which I will of course write about later…) but this trip has given me some extra time to think and reflect upon the “other” trip I just took – which was the SVLG Energy Event. This took place at Stanford just days before I headed off… So.. let’s talk SVLG!

What can I say? Lots of interesting and smart people all huddled in various auditoriums and conference rooms. People talking, smart people listening, and smart people networking. It was a long event – starting at 8;30 (of course with traffic from SF I tend not to be the early bird and arrived somewhere around 9:30. Fashionably late – but in good spirits!

Check out the above video for some “live from the street” attendee perspectives. Thanks to those folks that were kind enough to share their thoughts as I zoomed in on them and stopped them in their tracks!

To give you some additional content for the event – let me share a quick pick of the agenda. As I sit in the airport – I realize pictures are worth a 1000 words – and it just so happens that I scanned the agenda… here is the lunch time session that I attended:

Any chance I get to hear a VC panel – just sign me up! Now these guys were fun and educational to listen to. They each had their own personalities come thru nicely on stage – which I really appreciated – since listening to robotic like text-book MBA’s doesn’t really do to much for me. These guys were good. These guy were smart. I listened and took notes!

Random Key Points/Topics

+ to introduce efficiencies – -> you do need to spend capital

+ this is an industry in formation

+ requires enterprise and consumer participation

+ the challenge is “behavior” not “technology” related

+ need to engage consumer/enterprise across full value chain

+ need to spin value proposition so corporate will buy it – need to see employee/bottom line benefit

This discussion was a good eye opener for anyone thinking that “green = a fast enterprise sale” It just ain’t so folks…and as we trod through this learning curve (both for the vendors and the enterprises) it will take time for everyone to get comfortable and for the adoption velocity to increase and strong selling markets to develop. Behavioral changes just take time…



Its time to step up my blog game and start shooting videos! Hope you like this one – it is green screen video, post production by Final Cut/LiveType, shot using a Canon A1S HD camera and about 5k wattage of pro lighting. Sorry – it’s hard to be energy efficient using 5k of light – but that’s what it takes to produce this stuff!

It’s a generic wireless video – in that I hope to get the minds of IT and Facilities folks thinking about WSN (Wireless Sensor Network) technology and how the application of such technology can help green their enterprise data center. Remember – for technology to have value – it must solve a problem. The current problem, as I see it today in older data centers, is the clear lack of power and thermal visibility – which just plainly drives major inefficiencies and cooling over-kills.  Solve this problem – and you can save major money and tighten your green belt a notch.

Rather than write a long blog post – just watch the video please!

Making a video like this has been fun. I’ve still yet to develop my camera personality – at times I am looking a little too serious perhaps. But, over time I hope to loosen up and have some fun and expression to help flow the timeline out a bit more and make it more natural. It’s ain’t easy – but I’ll be working on it!

Get Ready for the SVLG Energy Party of the year!!!

Looking forward to this event – both to see folks that I’ve met during the last year as well as some of the new shakers and movers in the energy game. SVLG IMHO brings in the best of the best (heck I’m going to it right?)  so this is definitely an event to bring your A-game to. I was so excited to publish this post that I even high-lightened the title in green!

I’ll be in full force at this event. I’m very curious to compare the event velocity to the previous SVLG Energy Summit I was at – and see what trends or patterns are becoming more pronounced in the vendor solutions and customers use case descriptions. There is no better market indicator that customer use cases and stories to figure out what is really happening – or is going to happen.

I’ll post an update of the event, and maybe even some video footage if I can work it.

See you there hopefully!

Well, if you really want to boil down the GreenIT deal – I *guess* you could look at the above picture (Thanks HP! I used to work there post acquisition of an early stage start-up that I worked for so I should give them some credit here!) and realize just where the “megawatts” are being consumed and then correlate consumption to business value. It’s a fancy chart – and as I look at it – I try and figure out what the key takeaways are…

Challenges

It appears every top image represents a challenge: Sourcing, Data Center, Server, Virtualization, Application and finally business processes. Wow – seems like this world we live in is all about challenges! Depressing… I’d rather this be viewed as “Opportunity” since this is way more positive – and based on action – is actually an achievable goal. Mind you, I’m not associating a metric or threshold with this “goal” – I’m just saying that for the purposes for this Friday morning blog post – any effort an enterprise can take with respect to any action is a good thing.

Visualization

It’s popular, sounds great at a cocktail party and I’m frankly bored to death hearing and talking about it. Been there done that! VM’s are great, get a blade and go run and gun as many rogue servers down and create a couple of high density racks (add some thermal and branch circuit monitoring of course, and always obey ASHRAE guidelines!) and loop on this till N-Rogue-Servers = zero and you’re done! Nice story – time to move on to some else more exciting I say…

Application Rationalization

Now this is a tricky one… who owns the apps? … who runs the apps? … and who understand the true business value, operational and maintenance cost of these? The answer? No one. Nor will anyone stand up and take this challenge on… I was once working with a large Financial institutional ( F500) and they figured they had about 4,000 rouge apps running, running with  zero governance -  and they were “hoping” to clean it up. Today, guess what? – they still have 4,000 rogue apps! or maybe 5000!  Application rationalization is a tough cookie to crack – but  if you could – well, that reduces server count, vm count, streamlines the business and reduces multiple business processes. Yup a good thing!  Which takes me onto business processes…

Business Processes

Ah.. the holy grail. This is where we all need to really start  What is the business problem we are looking to solve and let’s design and architect backwards from there. At the business level, I know to produce “one unit of business value” I will need “xyz megawatts of powered infrastructure behind this” and I can now start to balance cost to internal ROI for any given application. This I find is very interesting! Most of the cost justifications I’ve seen to date are based on development cost (internal or out-sourced), plus server infrastructure (purchased, leased, cloud-services) but the next stage needs to start including the “mega-watt” cost to light this infrastructure up and actually deliver (with 5 nines reliability – since we are talking mission critical enterprise services here, with N+1 redundancy) this application capability to the hungry end-user community. Name plate values work well as the initial starting point, and some have gone that direction – but to accurately understand the ‘real cost” – nothing beats real-time branch circuit monitoring. As dynamic as is the user community, the energy per server (or blade) varies in real-time. Nothing in the world is constant!

And The Point Here Is?

What’s my point? Well I’m a little cranky this morning – maybe because I am low on coffee. Maybe because I feel that the business process side of the equation is not being investigated and understood as well as it should be. We really need to understand why we have certain business and application instances within an organization. The cost of rogue servers is one things, but the cost of inefficient and unwarranted applications and inefficient business processes behind them – is the real problem in my mind.

I always thought business process (BPM) “stuff” was complicated and boring. I now take that back. It is truly the magic that makes the organization tick. Green this baby first and the rest will follow…

Time for more coffee…

So you need a little extra capacity? Pour a pad and drop a box. Pretty simple – and in this video you see near the end the temp variances of summer and winter and the internal air flow management that takes place inside. Pretty cool.

Microsoft Data Center Container was my idea!

It’s really cool that they listened to me.

(Disclaimer: I bought a Mac 3 years ago after Microsoft Vista crashing forced me to. I love my Mac. I sold my PC on Ebay. End of post.)

(Oh, and ignore all the Silverlight messages too. I downloaded that for my mac, didn’t work so I just Screeflow’d into a .mov. done! )

Can wait for the Mac DC_Container_Pro to ship….

Ha! So, I was kinda slow to write a post on my attendance at Data Center World that just took place in Nashville – and could not find a good picture of the event.

If you’ve ever spent time in Nashville – you know all about Country & Western and Jack Daniels. So, to help grab your attention -> I’ve decided to use a Jack Daniels picture I found!

It actually works well to highlight that just like good computer equipment, a good whiskey also needs to be chilled!

I’m not a whiskey drinker – but you can’t visit Nashville without seeing a 1000 signs for it, nor can you visit Data Center World without thinking of cooling!





• What’s my inlet temp?

• Where are my hot spots?

• How cold in the cold aisle?

• Can I safely increase temp and save money?

• How hot is the return temp?

All good things to be thinking if you happening to have the time to sit and think. Everyone is busy. I get that. Everyone at AFCOM was moving fast through the exhibit areas – anxious to see what might exist in the “latest” and “greatest” of new technologies to help “increase efficiency“, “gain capacity” and “save “money“. But you know what, if you sit back – some of the most challenging problems can be solved with the simplest of tricks – dating back to the basics of air conditioning, air flow management and the laws of physics. Maybe this is why simple things like “Scotch on the Rocks” has survived for so long… It’s just a good thing, done right.

Simple is good. Take some simple steps towards air flow management and temperature visibility and you might be surprised at what you see and what you can quickly fix your your data center environment!

I’ll drink to that!