The second phase of Clarity’s project to provide the Australian utility company Western Power with a smarter telecoms network management system is complete, showing how telecoms OSS is now moving sideways into the utility industry.
Utility companies are increasingly reliant on telecommunications as a key enabler for Smarter Grids. Utilities that can monitor their network in real-time, isolating issues quickly, can ensure the best customer service and can focus their investment in network infrastructure exactly where it is needed. The software components that the power industry needs are the same building blocks that OSS providers have supplied to telcos for 25 years: strong visualization, data correlation/analytics, mediation and topology management.
Clarity, the award-winning provider of unified telecommunications solutions designed to simplify operations, today announced that it has completed the second phase of its deployment at Western Power, providing them with a scalable Telecommunications Network Management System (TNMS) that will be capable of supporting the continued growth and increasing complexity of their network.
This project builds on the first phase, which saw Clarity deploy an integrated Inventory Management and Alarm Management solution to provide Western Power with a single view of their network and support their end-to-end planning, design, construction and assurance processes. This second phase has provided Western Power with enhanced capabilities to proactively monitor network health to identify and resolve problems before they impact the network.
The additional functionality deployed in this second phase provides Western Power’s Operations Centre with the capability to monitor trends in the network that signal future potential areas of failure. This enables Western Power to have a highly available telecommunications network, whilst reducing their operational costs by taking a more holistic, automated and business process driven approach to network assurance.
The functionality delivered by Clarity in this second phase of the project includes:
• Performance Management: Improved network assurance with monitoring, analysis and reporting on performance trends of physical and logical network elements and services
• Visualisation: Ability to see many different views of the network from geographical map views, to equipment and circuit views, as well as a Remote Terminal Unit (RTU View) that has specific importance to the Utility industry
• Performance Data Collection: Collection of performance data for analysis and reporting, through integrating to a variety of legacy and next generation network devices via Clarity’s Element Connect layer
• Enterprise Management: Monitoring the connections between the TNMS and the network, ensuring that a loss of connection is immediately identified so that no critical network alarms are missed
Clarity and Western Power are currently planning a third phase which will ensure Western Power can continue to reduce operational costs and maximise asset life in the face of a continually growing communications network, that is poised to support more intelligent two way real-time communications associated with their planned Smart Grid initiatives.
Al Edgar, Manager of the Secondary Systems Engineering Branch Transmission Division at Western Power, said: “I am delighted with the benefits provided by the Clarity platform from both an operational and planning perspective. Without the capabilities of the unified standards-based platform Clarity has delivered, we simply would not have been able to cope with the explosive growth in network elements and complexity we have seen over the last few years.”
Bob Darwin, Vice President Global Utilities at Clarity agreed, adding “Utility companies are increasingly reliant on telecommunications as a key enabler for smarter grids. They need to ensure that these rapidly growing, complex, multi-vendor communications networks are reliable and robust. The only way to efficiently manage this growth, whilst simultaneously lowering capital and operational costs, is through a unified operational management platform that constantly monitors and reports on all network activity. Utilities that can monitor their network in real-time, isolating issues quickly, can ensure the best customer service and can focus their investment in network infrastructure exactly where it is needed.”
Western Power will be presenting at the TM Forum Australian Regional Spotlight, which takes place on 16 March 2011 at the Sydney Harbour Marriott Hotel.