Bottom Line (Public 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. 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 and strategies. 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 is Business-Driven IT Management (BDIM).
BDIM can be used by IT managers and also by business executives. For the IT manager, BDIM helps to select or prioritize IT actions so that the "best" decisions, in a business sense, are chosen. 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. This model includes all relevant entities and
their metrics, defines their relationships, and specifies how business metrics are
measured or calculated. 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, risk, etc.
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 activities but goes on to explicitly include the business in the model, especially through the proper application of business metrics.
In the past, we have examined change management, problem management, performance management, and portfolio management. Our work continues to include other IT management processes and concepts.
Current status
- The project was funded by HP from 2004 to 2009.
- Currrently our interests are:
- A more thorough treatment of service portfolio management;
- The inclusion of risk in BDIM models;
- The modeling of business value as it is affected by IT.
- A more thorough treatment of service portfolio management;
Smart Switch
The Smart Switch project aims to develop a software system to help power system operators find optimal switching sequences to isolate or restore parts of a power system while obeying interlocking and other restrictions. Today, system operators must find such sequences manually. An automatic solution will lower restoration times and minimize errors. The system is being developed for a generation and transmission power. This project is financed by CHESF/Aneel.
Current status
- To be contracted in 2009
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.