Surfacing new applications with Microsoft Surface

Today’s Boston Globe contains a brief article about Microsoft Surface and its application for visitors to Sheraton hotels. The story has a neat picture as well as information on how the hotel chain is deploying Surface to serve as a virtual concierge for its visitors.

We blogged in June about Harrah’s use of Microsoft Surface and its likely usefulness to the utility industry, especially for running the power grid, making it smarter and self-healing, and managing power fleets. 

An example where it could be used is in grid visualization applications like this situational awareness application from our partner Areva. This solution provides “situational awareness” of power events on the grid. The energy management system dashboard demonstrates the ability to create on the fly dashboards, the ability to drill down into problem areas and send live snapshots to others for collaboration and problem solving. This could easily be accomplished with Surface.

We continue to see great hope for these sorts of new technologies and their applications to the utilities industry. We also continue to urge utilities to keep a keen eye on the types of technologies which potential younger workers will have grown up with, especially as they compete with other industries for the next generation of employees.

Larry Cochrane