Who's Behind Knowledge Executive Summit?
Knowledge Executive Summit is an annual event produced by Energy Central:
Energy Central was founded in 1996 to satisfy the global power industry’s need for a reliable, trusted information hub where executives and field representatives alike could share ideas and discuss concepts that could alter the future of electric energy. Energy Central provides ground-breaking research, insightful reports and analytics, advisory services, and original, thought-provoking commentary — in print, online and through well-attended events — on energy-driven topics such as: utility business , smart grid, renewable energy, energy storage ,transmission and distribution , generation and customer analytics.
The Summit would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors:
 esri
Build a Knowledge Infrastructure with GIS from Esri Thousands of workers will retire from the utility industry over the next several years. Imagine all the wisdom and analytic power that will be missing when these workers retire.
The average age of U.S. utility workers is nearly 50 and more than 148,000 utility employees fall in the 55-to-64-year-old range, with another 26,000 employees over age 65, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A recent study published by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) showed that 61 percent of line superintendents are age 50 or older.
What many utilities are missing is an ability to capture as much of that knowledge as possible before experienced workers retire. The common denominator of that knowledge is location.
Utilities have been capturing facts in a geographic information system (GIS) for years. Today, GIS technology from Esri can capture observations and predictive information, collect data from all kinds of sources, and help utility staff make better risk predictions. GIS can create models that document the data sources, run analysis, and produce results in the form of a map.
The key is to have these models validated and supplemented by experienced workers before they leave, so that utilities can truly build a knowledge infrastructure.
Most utilities have collected an enormous amount of data that can be used for spatial analysis within a GIS. While traditionally GIS is used for making clearer maps of the electric system, it now serves as a framework and foundation for the knowledge infrastructure.
For utilities, this knowledge infrastructure is as much an asset as the actual pipes, wires, and hardware of the electric or gas system. The more knowledge a utility has about its assets, employee experiences, customer behavior, and the world around them, the better management decisions will be. This is where Esri can help.
Esriis built on the philosophy that a geographic approach to problem solving ensures better communication and collaboration. Esri develops geographic information system (GIS) solutions that function as an integral component to your utility.
GIS from Esri helps you answer questions and solve problems. When viewed in the context of geography, your data is quickly understood and easily shared.
GIS integrates hardware, software, and data for capturing, managing, analyzing, and displaying all forms of geographically referenced information. GIS allows us to view, query, and understand data in many ways. We see relationships, patterns, and trends in the form of GIS-based maps, globes, reports, and charts.
Utility operators need GIS to make the best decisions about key issues such as collecting data, managing smart meter and sensor installation, analyzing customer behavior, and incorporating renewable energy. When viewed in the context of geography, data is quickly understood and easily shared. Furthermore, GIS technology can be integrated into any enterprise information system framework.
For more information, please visit www.esri.com/electric esri
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 Oracle
Technology and Application for Your Utility’s Future Around the world, utilities are under pressure. Citizens demand energy and water that don’t undermine environmental quality. Financial stakeholders look for operational efficiency at a time when aging workforces and infrastructures need replacement. Regulators seek action on Smart Grid and Smart Metering initiatives that add intelligence to infrastructure. Customers seek choice and convenience—but without additional costs.
Pressures like these are forcing today’s utilities to re-examine every aspect of their business, from supply to consumption. And no utility can address these challenges alone.
Oracle has positioned itself as utilities’ software partner of choice in the quest to respond positively to these pressures. To do so, Oracle brings together a worldwide team of utility experts, software applications that address mission-critical needs, a rock-solid suite of corporate operational software, high performance servers and storage, and world-leading middleware and technology. The result: flexible, innovative solutions that increase efficiency, improve stakeholder satisfaction, future-proof your organization—and help your organization transform into a next-generation utility.
The Oracle Difference End-to-End Solutions Oracle provides utilities with the world’s most complete set of software choices. We help you address emerging customer needs, speed delivery of utility-specific services, increase corporate administration efficiency, and turn business data into business intelligence. Underpinning all these applications is Oracle’s world-renowned middleware and technology.
Choice Oracle helps utilities address immediate problems while building toward a more cohesive, efficient IT future. You can begin with one best-of breed solution that addresses a specific pain point. Or you can implement several pre-integrated applications that ease the development and administration of cross-departmental business processes. You may also standardize on the complete Oracle applications and technology footprint to focus accountability and significantly reduce the resources you must spend on vendor relations.
Configuration, Not Customization Customizing vendors’ off-the-shelf software is expensive, time-consuming, and uncertain. And once the customizations are in place, you have made it far more difficult and costly—or impossible—to upgrade the software as new market and regulatory requirements emerge.
Yet no two utilities operate identically.
Oracle solves this problem by letting you adapt software to your needs through configuration. During implementation, you make a series of choices that tailor operations to your precise requirements. And Oracle preserves those choices throughout multiple updates and upgrades. You get the cost advantages of off-the-shelf products with the operational efficiencies inherent in software that works the way you need it to work.
Integration By basing all applications on an increasingly robust set of IT industry standards, Oracle makes it easy to integrate applications from any vendor. Your staff does not need to learn proprietary, potentially obscure languages or cope with complex and one-off procedures. Integrating Oracle applications with existing legacy or other non-Oracle packages is a straightforward process that helps make for faster implementations and smoother operations.
When you choose multiple Oracle applications, you receive, in a growing number of cases, pre-packaged integrations that ease the integration process even further.
As you implement and use a variety of Oracle applications over time, you will gradually migrate toward Oracle’s Applications Integration Architecture (AIA). This single platform for Oracle’s productized and standardized integrations reduces the time and cost of application integration, dramatically eases upgrading and testing,
Innovation The speed of market change in the utilities industry puts a premium on technological innovation.
Because Oracle addresses database, middleware, and applications in a cohesive whole, our development teams quickly spot innovations in one part of the “solution stack” that can deliver benefits in others. Even before a technology innovation, for instance, is ready for general release, Oracle applications and middleware developers are updating their software so that it takes full advantage of the technology change.
The same applies to innovations in applications or middleware, which quickly spread to all parts of the Oracle Utilities offerings.
The result: New technology delivered quickly and seamlessly to serve your unique needs.
Partners Oracle’s outstanding set of integration and technology partners supplement our products and services with vision and commitment that ensures you receive the very best that the software industry can offer, exactly when and where you need it.
Oracle
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