In this podcast, Carvallo goes into detail about building the enterprise architecture for the Smart Grid based on service-oriented architecture and cloud computing.

He also talks about his involvement in driving the IT Leadership and CTO Best Practices Collection, a 700-page document that describes essential IT processes, such as how to manage a data center to how to run a project management office. He also provides some takeaways for CIOs who might be interested in moving to Smart Grid technology. Despite the economy, Austin, Texas, has seen a spike in major businesses, such as google.com and Hewlett-Packard, moving into the area, as well as more people relocating there to find jobs. Meanwhile, Austin Energy, the nation’s ninth largest community-owned electric utility, is making sure it can meet the power demands of its one million residential customers and 41,000 businesses, and continues to return more than $1.5 billion in profits back to the community.

If all goes as planned, Austin Energy could become the country’s first electrical utility to deliver Smart Grid technology. A Smart Grid delivers electricity from suppliers to consumers using digital technology to save energy, reduce cost, and increase reliability and transparency.  
 
Perhaps, the credit for putting Austin Energy on its Smart Grid journey belongs to Andres Carvallo, the organization’s CIO. In fact, this year Computerworld Honors Program’s recognized the outstanding significance of Carvallo’s Smart Grid work in the energy field. Carvallo just could become the first CIO to deliver the country’s first Smart Grid for a public utility.
 
The genesis for the Smart Grid began in 2003 when Carvallo was working on automation and efficiency and optimization of the business. In 2004, after reading the Electric Power Research Institute’s white paper on the Intelligrid, Carvallo thought it would be possible to use similar technology for Austin Energy. In fact, not wanting to infringe on the Intelligrid trademark, he coined the term Smart Grid.   In 2007, he gave his first speech about the Smart Grid. With the support of executive management, Carvallo’s team began working on Austin Energy’s Smart Grid, which seamlessly integrates four disciplines: energy, communications, software, and hardware.
 
He says, “Together these four disciplines help to redefine how we generate, distribute, and consume electricity. The project goes beyond how we collect data and move it, and how safely we do it. The decisions will be able to make about that data will affect production, distribution, and consumption of energy, from turning on and off devices, to managing plug-in hybrid electric vehicles in the house. “
 
Of course, as a public utility Austin Energy must abide by the North American Electrical Reliability Council’s standards and regulations for infrastructure protection and cyber security. Carvallo says, “We will become compliant this year.” Meanwhile, he has been one of eight people working on the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s cyber security standards for Smart Grids. He says, “We are awaiting the publication of the interim Smart Grid standards.”

Bio
Andres Carvallo is the chief information officer at Austin Energy.  In addition to his CIO responsibilities as CIO, Carvallo sits on an eight-person executive team, as well as on the Innovation and Opportunity Development executive board. Outside of Austin Energy, he is vice chairman for the Large Public Power Companies’ CIO Task Force. Carvallo is a frequent speaker at both IT and energy industry venues, such as CleanTech.

His outstanding work in IT has earned him many awards, including IT Executive of the Year by the Association of Information Technology Professionals in 2005, Premier 100 IT Leader by Computerworld in 2006, Best in Class of Premier 100 by Computerworld in 2006, CIO 100 Award by CIO Magazine in 2006, InformationWeek 500 by InformationWeek Magazine in 2007, and Computerworld’s Top 12 Green IT Companies in 2008 (First Ever).

Before joining Austin Energy, Carvallo held key positions at four start-ups and large companies, such as Philips Electronics, Digital Equipment Corporation, and Microsoft. He received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Kansas, and has completed executive management programs at Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Resources
Austin Energy Delivers Opportunity - Smart Grid News
Exec Calls for Smart Grid Policies - EE Times
Top 10 Smart Grids - GreenTech Media

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

Sponsored by BMC Software

Building a robust enterprise architecture that can meet the needs of a business isn’t an option, it’s something every organization has to do. And asking about the ROI  on an enterprise architecture project is like asking about what’s the return on investment of your physical plant. You need to focus on making sure your enterprise architecture delivers real business value. That’s the authoritative conclusion from Len Fehskens, The Open Group’s resident expert about anything having to do with enterprise architecture.  Fehskens’ official title is vice president and global profession lead for The Open Group.

CIOs interested in all aspects of enterprise architecture construction, especially service-oriented architecture, might consider getting a company-membership in The Open Group.  A merger of the X Open group and the Open Systems Foundation, The Open Group is a consortium of IT vendors and users that focuses on the development of open standards for enterprise architecture, as well as the professional certification for enterprise architects.  The organization focuses on the concept of Boundaryless Information Flow, which is the integration of enterprise applications (including legacy components), the exchange of information between those applications, and the standards to support these things. These efforts have led to the creation of The Open Group Architecture Framework or TOGAF. The current version spells out types of enterprise architectures – the business architecture, the data architecture, the technology architecture, and the application architecture.

When it comes to the complex subjects of enterprise architecture and service-oriented architecture, Fehskens, in this podcast, dispels much good advice from the dozens of conversations he had had with members of The Open Group. He says that you can’t do an entire enterprise architecture project as a separate effort and expect that it’s going to come out right. The best way to do an enterprise architecture project, according to Fehskens, is to do it project by project or solution by solution at a time. He says that you might start by picking a business solution that you know you have to solve and taking a disciplined architectural approach to solving it.

“While you’re doing this, you might take a larger perspective and start thinking about the types of questions you would ask when you do a service-oriented architecture project.  Next, you need to develop a strategic context solution by solution, focusing on business problems rather than technology. As a result, you grow your enterprise architecture by business solution by business solution.  You’ll also need some type of a strategic roadmap that gives you a rough lay of the land. This approach helps us to reduce the problem of painting yourself in a corner, but at the same time, you’re getting a substantive return on return on your investment, project by project. You don’t wait before the entire enterprise architecture is complete before you start seeing benefits”

In this podcast, Fehskens also talks about why service-service architecture, makes sense as a concept to the business side of the operation.  According to Fehskens, SOA makes it easier to align IT with the business because it uses the type same of language and the same type of concepts which the business uses.  He says, “We’ve  finally figured out the right way to think how we put systems together so both the sides of the house speak the same language. The challenge is how do we make it work. The question I hear most frequently is not should I do SOA, but what is the relationship between SOA and my enterprise architecture:  How do I make those two things work?  Are they the same things? Should they be the same things? How do I sort out the relationship between SOA and enterprise architecture?”  These are just a few of the things Fehskens explores in this podcast.

Bio
Len Fehskens has more than 40 years of experience in the IT industry as both an individual practitioner and manager. As the vice president and global profession lead for enterprise architecture at The Open Group , he oversees all of the activities relating to enterprise architecture, including AOGEA, TOGAF, and the Architecture Forum.

Prior to joining The Open Group, Fehskens led the Worldwide Architecture Profession Office for HP Services at Hewlett-Packard. He has worked for Digital Equipment Corporation, Data General Corporation, Prime Computer, Compaq, and Hewlett-Packard. He is the lead inventor on six software patents on the object oriented management of distributed systems. He was recently certified in TOGAF.  He majored in computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Resources
Is SOA part of the enterprise architecture or does it replace it? - InfoWorld
Opening up on Standards - eweek
Hot Certifications in a Cool Marketplace - InfoWorld

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
Audio Editing by Doug Marcis