Mobile Workforce Management Grows Stronger with Acquisition

Reliable electricity supply is a key part of achieving prevalent “Smart Energy,” a term which the Microsoft Worldwide Utilities Group uses to mean the entire Power and Utility value chain, from fuel source to inside the home. Reliable electricity is produced by power operators who strive to keep their plants operating at peak performance, in order to achieve maximum efficiency in how they use fuel, produce power, minimize impact to the environment and contain costs.

The utility industry has for years been employing technology to maximize and continually improve plant operations. When Invensys’ Wonderware announced last week that they will acquire SAT Corp, two strong Microsoft partner companies advanced the cause for greater industry plant optimization through the combination of their technology components, built upon Microsoft solution platforms.

According to Invensys’ press release, their acquisition was made “to offer mobile solutions that will help drive operational excellence for customers. With this acquisition, Wonderware will form a new mobile solutions group that further expands on SAT’s position as a leading global supplier of mobile workforce management and decision support solutions, used to enhance manufacturing visibility and task execution within industrial and manufacturing markets.”

Wonderware provides mobile workforce management and decision support software for enabling mobile business processes in manufacturing industries, including the utility industry.

Wonderware leverages the latest Microsoft mobile infrastructure and communications foundation, RFID technology, secure wireless, support for hazardous location devices, and integrated BlueTooth peripheral devices, to deliver an enterprise class mobile infrastructure and decision support system.

For those just beginning to learn about the benefits of mobile infrastructure improvements, I’d suggest viewing this page on the Microsoft website. It provides some good case studies about what mobile workforces can do for companies. And IT professionals will benefit by learning more about the platform, here.

Going mobile is a important part of the Smart Energy future we foresee for utilities. In future blogs we will talk about its importance to field operations. - Jon