‘Composable’ utilities to reinvent energy landscape
Worldwide, utilities are under pressure to adopt more sustainable business practices in the move to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Even in South Africa, alternatives to coal-based power generation are being pursued especially given the challenges of maintaining the current electricity grid.
Embracing composable technology and rethinking large-scale infrastructure commitments can become a vital enabler of this, says Technodyn International. According to Gartner, composable technology refers to using interchangeable building blocks. Think of it as adopting a modular setup where utilities can easily rearrange their technology systems based on requirements. This gives them a level of agility they did not have before.
It also empowers the utility to manage digital transformation efforts at any point within its infrastructure. Going composable means that no rip-and-replace is required of existing systems and processes at an enterprise-wide level. Instead, more targeted implementations can be done to solve priority business cases. Perhaps a single application is replaced by a more effective point solution.
“This process can easily be repeated throughout the utility resulting in different pieces being replaced over time and exchanging the old for the new. Essentially, the composable technology model lets utilities select solutions to support business processes, resulting in a far better return on their investments than trying to overhaul complete functions within the business,” says Esenthren Govender, Solutions Executive at Technodyn.
Much of the attraction behind modular is to reduce the complexity associated with technology environments. Protocols and other methodologies are shifting to open, common, and interoperable frameworks, allowing systems to talk and work together seamlessly. It is becoming increasingly common for utilities to strive toward standardisation.
“A composable technology model makes it easy to replace legacy and customised components with solutions that support a common framework. Transitioning to this composable environment is influencing how business processes can adapt to support more sustainable technologies and alternative energy systems. Utilities with greater flexibility and scale associated with a composable model can innovate far more quickly than a traditional model. Given the priority to reinvent the energy sector, this is a critical building block to affecting enterprise-wide change in more manageable chunks,” concludes Govender.
About Technodyn International
Technodyn International is the exclusive strategic Sub-Saharan African partner of IFS global, delivering on-premises and cloud-based enterprise applications for businesses that build, sell, distribute, and maintain goods and services. Our portfolio extends service management, enterprise resource planning and enterprise asset management solutions, delivered as modules or as a single suite and hosted in your data centre or cloud or our cloud. We ensure the effective delivery of solutions, products, services, and training to our partner-led channel ecosystem. A subsidiary of Technodyn Holdings, a Level 1 Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) company with its headquarters in South Africa, we deliver quality global solutions to a local market.