Utilities invest in smart grid

A study commissioned by CSC and conducted by IDC Energy Insights reveals utility and retail energy providers are increasing investments in information and communication technologies, says CivSource.

The report highlights that companies aren't leveraging data generated by smart grid technologies to understand consumption. This could identify potential revenue leakage, forecast customer costs and allow customers to know when they are reaching pre-set limits.

CSC and IDC officials say market competition and a long-term vision of enterprise architecture can help utilities investing in smart grid R&D recoup their costs in relatively short amounts of time.

Bank of America MD Andy Brown says blending internal and external cloud capabilities will be a challenge for enterprise architects over the next five years, states Information Week.

Brown says the choices enterprises make will depend on the SLAs, prices and data security guarantees available at each level. He adds that the winners will be able to create a near-real-time services architecture to go with the human collaboration architecture.

"You have to come up with the right blend of where you use the cloud and what you keep inside," says Brown. "The most important part is how you join them together."

Progress Software has released the Progress Sonic enterprise service bus (ESB), reports Market Watch.

The ESB supports RESTful architectural approach to integration. RESTful Web services simplify integration with portals, mash-ups, mobile devices, and Web-based applications.

Tom Maguire, CTO at EMC, says: "The Progress Sonic ESB product is an integral part of our messaging infrastructure, and we welcome the improvements the Progress team has made with the Sonic 8.0 release.”