Another Partner looks to the Cloud: Telvent/Schneider Electric to Leverage Microsoft Azure

Telvent to Leverage Microsoft Azure

Our first blog post about the use of cloud computing in the Utility sector occurred in December 2008, when we noted how Utilities were already looking to various types of computing models that could achieve greater efficiencies and scale because of the cost-savings possible.

That blog noted how Utilities were naturally interested in cloud computing for customer service and other operations that weren’t necessarily connected to their primary mission of reliability. But we also noted how this might change over time as the right infrastructure was put in to place. Check out this post and see how close we were to predicting and answering today’s challenges. It was pretty good actually.

Fast forward to an announcement today from Telvent, about its intent to expand our companies’ existing alliance agreement to further develop the use of cloud platform, Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing solution. The announcement is one more step forward in terms of that new infrastructure being put in place.

Telvent, along with its parent company Schneider Electric, is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and Telvent is also a Smart Energy Reference Architecture participant. I can tell you from my conversation with their leaders that they are in full agreement that the smart grid will inevitably be structured to take advantage of a cloud architecture, allowing Utilities to build scaled applications to any size, as well as provision resources within minutes. Telvent’s embrace and development of Azure will help their customers avoid the complexities of traditional solution deployments and accelerate value to customers and stakeholders. “Integration-ability” and ease of management is built in to the cloud’s operating premise. Telvent fully recognizes those advantages.

Telvent and Microsoft have already been busy at work developing joint cloud-based applications since January 2012 and Schneider Electric is currently conducting evaluations of the Azure platform for software development across its other business units. Their first Azure-based products are expected to be available in 2013. Telvent’s ArcFM server is the first product that offers advanced GIS data visualization tools across the entire Utility enterprise to be offered on Windows Azure. You can learn more about Telvent ArcFM on our solution data sheet here. – Jon C. Arnold