Compared to other industries, Information Technology has been an afterthought in the Energy industry.

IT as an afterthought - especially around application integration - continues to be the norm for majority of Smart Grid pilots across North America. For example, most utilities are focused exclusively on deploying smart-meters, communication infrastructure and Meter Data Management (MDM) products in their pilot phases and hardly any have included developing a strategic integration architecture that ties MDM data with other enterprise applications such as Outage Management System (OMS), Customer Information System (CIS), Geographical Information System (GIS), Distribution Management System (DMS), and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA). Additionally, the popular approach of connecting MDM with CIS in a point-to-point manner may work for low volume and low transaction pilots but may not scale to production quality volumes and bi-directional communication models. Moreover, if the CIS is ever to be replaced, the MDM integration with CIS will require redesign and rework. In the absence of a strategic IT approach, current integration practices provide little value to achieving the larger SG & DR objectives from an IT perspective. In fact, some early warning signs from those who have embarked on the journey indicate that the integration complexity has been grossly under-estimated and can no longer be ignored. Many projects have been delayed due to the technical challenges brought about by the lack of strategic IT planning.

Although the current tactical approach may have served companies well in the past, it will certainly not scale to support the larger vision of Smart Grid and Demand Response. Success or failure could rely squarely on the approach to solving the core IT challenges. Again, success will require a strategic rather than a tactical approach because the stakes are high as the Power industry launches new Smart Grid programs