Do More with Less: Asset Investment Planning Meets Windows 7

One of the most effective ways that utility and energy companies can do more with less is by optimizing both current and future asset investment decisions. Due to the growing number of complex variables that drive such decisions today, the optimization of what, when and where investments must be made (to implement and maintain a Smart Grid initiative, for example) demand far more than the “what if” scenarios that organizations can formulate manually. While external spreadsheet perspectives may help organizations to prioritize and give weighting to some variables, this data becomes much better vetted and far more meaningful when aggregated and analyzed with other critical and multifaceted data sets such as those generated by a company’s ERP, EAM, GIS and Legacy systems.

Processing multiple data sets that comprehend numerous changing asset investment planning (AIP) variables, both quantitative and qualitative, is a daunting task without the proper analytical tools. Fortunately, sophisticated AIP software is available to simplify this task from our Gold Certified Partner Axia Software, within the new Windows® 7 operating system, in its new REVEAL™ AIP Software solution.

Backedby a certified software development team and leveraging more than 25 person years of development work, Axia Software’s REVEAL™ AIP Suite was designed from the ground up to orchestrate analytical algorithms and multiple data sets to optimize asset investment decisions. On November 30, 2009, all salient AIP attributes embodied in REVEAL became seamlessly operable with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7. These attributes include multi-year project and program tracking, asset investment optimization, and linking corporate objectives to capital investment plans for asset lifecycle management.

clip_image002So what benefits, if any, come from porting Axia’s REVEAL software to Windows 7?

According to Trevor St. Germain, CTO of Axia Software, the REVEAL AIP Suite runs faster and looks better on both 32- and 64-bit flavors of Windows 7 than it did running on earlier XP and Vista operating systems. However, the benefits are more pronounced with the 64-bit option, notably, faster booting and improved security plus a significant increase in operating speed of the REVEAL optimization engine, thereby boosting overall performance. And since REVEAL is architected on the .net framework and supports the Microsoft Smart Energy Reference Architecture (SERA), Axia has leveraged this technology in ways to further benefit its customers by facilitating the alignment of information technology with their business processes to create an integrated utility which bodes well for utility and energy companies on a mission to do more with less. – Jon C. Arnold