Software solutions

With an increasingly broad range of software solutions available, utilities company can now hope to run their business on another level.

Software has come a long way since the early days of business IT applications. Thanks to continuous advancement, current solutions now allow utility companies to use fully integrated programs that manage everything from the planning and design stage, through to plant operation and plant decommissioning.

With the utility industry booming in the Middle East, it is an exciting period for software firms looking to attract new business. The changing nature of the industry, as new technologies are adopted, keeps software companies on their toes as they try to develop programs that can fulfil emerging
specialist tasks.

As environmental questions arise about energy usage and efficiency, software firms are able to bring their expertise to the problem. As power generation and water plants all shift to new imperatives aimed at having a less detrimental impact on the environment, software companies are there to supply solutions aimed at improving efficiency and reducing harmful emissions.

Other challenges software can tackle include the issues of an ageing work force, and in some cases ageing infrastructure, as well as deregulation across the world.

"In order to accommodate those changed business requirements there is huge need to invest and innovate in IT," says Bastian Fischer, vice president and general manager, Oracle EMEA. The largest enterprise software provider in the world, Oracle supplies applications for business support, whether this is entire packages in the forms of ERP (enterprise resource planning), CRM (customer relationship management) or EAM (enterprise asset management), as well as analytics and database applications.

"Oracle has not only business support applications but also very strong industry specific vertical applications, which help utilities companies optimise their processes, generate better efficiencies in their transmission and distribution, and overall save money," explains Fischer.

"They also help the customer side, helping provide better service, better and tighter customer service relationship, and also offering multi-channel access to those processes, through the web, through the phone and through self-service applications."

Customer service is seen as increasingly influential for Fischer, who believes it is important to empower the customers by giving them more choice on how they consume utilities, and being able to access self-service applications 24/7.

Swedish company IFS (Industrial and Financial Systems) - originally founded to develop software for the nuclear power industry - offers business solutions to the utility industry. The Middle East has been the company's fastest growth market for the last six years.

"We have a very strong belief in our solutions, which we developed together with the nuclear plants in Sweden. You cannot find tougher regulations anywhere in the world than in the nuclear industry for software solutions and their operation," says Ian Johnson, sales manager, IFS Middle East.

Software firms now aim to come in from the earliest stage possible of plant conception in order to maximise the plant's lifecycle and to ensure greater efficiency and less downtime.

UK company Bentley Solutions offers engineering software solutions for utilities infrastructure, with two key applications coming in the form of the CAD (computer-aided design) platform named MicroStation and the ProjectWise program, a server application, which covers the lifespan of the plant.

"The data you generate using Bentley solutions is used across the whole lifecycle of the infrastructure. What we provide are the engineering applications which let you access that data, report on that data and edit the data, and do all the chain management for it," declares Richard Zambuni, global marketing director, Bentley Geospatial.

With many customers in the utilities industry in the Middle East, Bentley now offers new engineering software.

"Now in the water sector, we not only offer the full GIS [geographic information system] solution, but we also have world's most successful hydrologic modelling software - WaterCAD, WaterGEMS, SewerCAD and SewerGEMS - which we have had a lot of interest for in the Middle East as water infrastructure, both for water and waste water, is being built at a dramatic rate," he explains.

Once the planning stage is complete and the implementation is under way, the amount of technical data, maintenance and safety instructions gathered would usually amount to ‘truck loads of documentation', that would be put into storage until maintenance personnel have to sift through the files to find the information.

"What we can offer is the documentation connected to applications, so when they are navigating they can click and bring up the latest drawings, the latest instructions and technical data, saving you time and money on the operations and maintenance," Johnson explains.

IT has developed at an exponential rate over the last twenty years, allowing more comprehensive set of solutions to be provided.

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