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CIS is core to utility company's businesses. It also is one of the most complex things they do, ranking in importance with the operation and maintenance of the transmission and distribution grids. Because CIS is so core to their operations, it must be linked to many other computer systems including financials, work management, field services, automated and manual meter reading, supply chain, etc.

Because utilities are relatively slow adopters of technology, many of them now have a collection of software systems from several generations of technological development. Linking these together has been difficult and often involved literally hundreds of point-to-point interfaces. This process of integration has been very time-consuming and expensive.

Today, Internet-based services, object-oriented programming and service-oriented-architecture (SOA) are simplifying the massive task of integration. Several new architectures such as .NET from Microsoft, Netweaver from SAP, Java from Sun Microsystems use basically open SOA to enable the linking of systems. Now, major software vendors are adopting various versions of SOA to “de-couple” their different modules and enable integration. However, few CISs have been built from the ground up as SOA-architected.

An exception are the products offered by Continental Utility Systems Inc., (CUSI) a Jonesboro, AR.-based firm that has used .NET and SQL server as the foundation for its CIS and other products. Thus CUSI’s CIS and other products are ready out-of-the-box to operate in the new computing environment.

With more than 900 implementations, CUSI, though not as widely known as some other firms, has begun to make waves, winning larger deals of late, including one of more than 500,000 customers in South Africa. With its advanced technology and architecuture, the firm seems to be poised to become an important force in the utility software market.

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