Bottom Line HP (Internal site)
Business-Driven Information Technology Management (BDIM). Aligning Information Technology (IT) with the business has developed into an important facet of the task of managing IT. In this project, we focus on the tasks of managing the IT infrastructure, particularly with regard to fault and performance management. The IT manager is now asked to manage the IT infrastructure from the business perspective, that is, using metrics understandable to business executives, and reflecting business priorities. This is considered important since typical metrics used in IT management (availability, response time) mean nothing to a business executive. Climbing away from the IT perspective to reach closer to the business perspective is being tackled in different ways, the most important among which are Business Process Management (BPM) and Business-Driven IT Management (BDIM). Although both BPM and BDIM take business processes into account, they are fundamentally different in that BPM aims to measure and improve business process execution quality whereas BDIM aims to measure the impact of IT faults and performance degradation using metrics that are couched in business terms, frequently of a financial nature.
BDIM can be used by IT managers and also by business executives. For the IT manager, BDIM helps to prioritize IT actions so that trouble conditions with the most business impact are fixed first; it allows one to drill down from high-level effect to the causes of the problems by following a most-critical path; it is helpful in gathering data to perform capacity planning with business priorities in mind. For the business executive, BDIM provides measures concerning the alignment between IT and the business.
BDIM is supported by a service impact model, or, more generally, a business impact model or BIM model. This model includes all relevant entities and their metrics, defines their relationships, and specifies how business metrics are measured or calculated. Current work in BDIM and BPM frequently uses the term business metric but really deals with business process metrics such as “rate of business transactions completed in a business process” and “end-to-end response time”. These metrics are closer to the business than the typical IT metrics but are still not what we call business metrics. In our definition, a business metric is one that may readily be understood by a top business executive and that is related to the final performance of the business, in terms of revenue, profit, cost, etc. By comparison, a business process metric is an attribute of a business process. Observe that, although BP metrics are related to the business (they may be considered performance drivers for Business Metrics), they are not indicative of final business performance. It is of interest to map BP metrics to business (performance) metrics.
Our objectives are to develop BDIM models both for operational BDIM, that is, BDIM used for short-term problem evaluation and resolution, and also for long-term or strategic BDIM. We aim for a full model that does not stop at the business processes but goes on to explicitly include the business in the model, especially through the proper application of business metrics. Finally, a very important objective is to produce low-intrusion BDIM solutions; this is in response to comments garnered from users that highlight the high cost of deployment of currently available BPM and BDIM solutions.
Current status
- The project started in February 2004 and has been renewed for 2008 with the following
objectives:
- Research change management in a Service Management (ITIL/ITSM) context through a business perspective.
- Produce new business impact models
- Identify opportunities for new research (research agenda)
Smart Action (Internal site)
The Smart Action project aims to develop a software system to help power system operators perform System Restoration. The system receives failure diagnostics from the Smart Alarms intelligent alarm processing system and suggests to the operator how the system should be restored. Additionally, the system can audit the actions undertaken by the operators during restoration. All documents associated with the restoration actions can be viewed through the graphical interface. The system is being developed for a generation and transmission power. This project is financed by CHESF/Aneel.
Current status
- Being developed since October 2005
- Conclusion in January 2007
Smart Alarms (Internal site)
The Smart Alarms project aims to develop a software system to help power system operators diagnose system faults during large scale contingencies. The basic problem to be solved is event/alarm correlation in order to map hundreds or thousands of events/alarms into much fewer high-level diagnostics. The basic value proposition for the end product is that it is "zero maintenance": there is essentially no maintenance activity to be performed on the Smart Alarms system even in the face of major topology changes. The system is interfaced to CEPEL's SAGE SCADA/EMS system but can be interfaced to other such systems. This project is financed by CHESF/Aneel.
Current status
- Initial development ended in July 2004.
- Currently installed and operational in all five CHESF regional centers and also in the main control center (COOS)
- A extension to the project was contracted in April 2008 with the following objectives:
- Raise the success rate of diagnostic activity from the low 90% to the high 90%
- Perform higher-level correlation to provide root-cause diagnostics
- Provide the diagnostics using a graphical user interface (using geographical and one-line diagrams)
- Perform preventive diagnosis of potential problematical situations
- Provide new outputs showing the business impact of faults for use by CHESF's top executives (Business Impact Analysis)
Smart Analysis (Internal site)
The Smart Analysis project aims to specify, implement and test a software system to produce diagnostics of faults in power systems equipment and systems. The software system must be based on behavior models of such equipments and systems. Given a functional specification of an equipment, mathematical (or other types of) models of the equipment must be constucted and diagnostic techniques must be researched based on these models. Validation will be performed using complex electronic and electrical equipments in CHESF's laboratories. The project must base the models on a library of plug-in components (sub-models, functions, etc.), allowing the easy construction of complete models. The library must be sufficiently generic to model various equipment types, including digital models, analogical models, discrete models, probabilistic models, Petri nets, etc. The diagnostic precision must be sufficient to allow pinpointing faults down to the level of the Logical Replacement Units (LRUs). This project is financed by CHESF/Aneel.
Current status
- The project is was contracted in March 2008.
Bottom Line CHESF (Internal site)
The Bottom Line-CHESF project is similar in spirit to the Bottom Line-HP project but was started earlier and had as a primary objective the creation of a tool to investigate the use of BDIM in an Electric Utility.
Current status
- The first part of the project was completed in 2004.
- A extension to the project was contracted in April 2008 and will focus on IT governance.
freeRoi (Internal site)
The freeROI project aims to build a prototype of a tool to analyze and compare alternatives concerning the adoption of free/open source software in enterprises. The comparison must consider financial dimensions (ROI, TCO, ...) as well as non-financial ones (risk, ...)
Current status
- The project started in October 2005 and concluded in 2006.