In an interview Marcus Johansson, senior executivedigital transformation, cyber security at Xcel energy discusses about the trends and challenges impacting the IT industry recently.
What Are Some of The Major Challenges And Trends Impacting The It Industry Lately?
There have been a few major challenges impacting the IT industry in recent times. The ‘great resignation’ drove a huge gap of talented resources for key roles. With major layoffs in most of the tech companies that gap has reduced. With Generative AI becoming mainstream, creating new value streams for business, it is the new ‘gold rush’ attracting talent but with a persistent skill .gap. Layered on top of this are fears of recession that has brought about deep cuts into budgets and spending for IT investments. Finally specifically for the utility and other regulated industries –-the goals of operational excellence, resilience, reliability and , speed-tomarket aspects are at odds with the risk avoidance measures needed due to cyber security risks.
As for key IT trends, there is a growing awareness and increased focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the IT workforce especially in leadership roles. This goes hand-inhand with efforts being undertaken with innovation and sustainability as primary drivers. In the utility industry, I have witnessed encouraging trends to encourage, promote and groom internal talent. The programs are designed to challenge internal team members to step up, take ownership, responsibility and leadership on keys strategic initiatives. I also see a great deal of work being done focused on the operational technology (OT) space specifically to digitize analog architecture for remote management and enhanced customer experience. Cyber-attacks remain a key priority in the industry.
With talent in such demand, there is a greater demand for the IT employees seeking richer benefits and, need for avenues to regain mental health. Gen X is becoming a bigger demographic than millennials in the work force and the gig economy is has become a viable alternative income source. The pressure to offer queries on flexible work schedules to maintain work-life balance is a challenge for the employers.
What Keeps You Up At Night When It Comes To Some Of The Major Predicaments In The It Industry?
There are many exciting things happening in the industry such as focus on sustainability, DEI and generative AI but there are few predicaments that keep me up at night. Talent being one of the biggest such as identifying and recruiting the right talent, promoting internal talent while ensuring there are exciting career pathways available to retain this talent.
There are ever increasing demands on the IT workforce to deliver value at half the cost and in half the time. So, it is a tough balancing act to manage and maintain customer expectations with employee workload. In my leadership, I champion incentives to keep my talent pool motivated. Incentives such as giving the flexibility in terms of work schedules, hybrid work location, mental health, and creative freedom to pursue innovative ideas (within the confines of the organization. More recently the challenges have multiplied due to recession fears driving budgetary constraints. In addition, influx of new technology – cloud adoption/migration and generative AI incorporation has put new pressure on hiring specific talent. All in all, there will be a need to have strong leadership in executive roles to navigate through these complexities and challenges.
Can You Tell Us About The Latest Project That You Have Been Working On And What Are Some Of The Technological And Process Elements That You Leveraged To Make The Project Successful?
At Xcel Energy, one of our strategic priorities is modernization of our energy grid. The focus is to upgrade the energy grid with Advanced Grid Intelligence and Security (AGIS). A significant investment has been made to bring to fruition an integrated distribution plan with an efficient and intelligent distribution system.
This 2B investment will bring forth state-of-the-art modeling and forecasting capabilities to improve our understanding of the grid, enable opportunities for advanced rate design and load management, and ability to plan for changing circumstances.
“The most exciting buzz around the IT industry is the awareness, growth, and potential possibilities of Generative AI.”
This effort has three parts:
A. Integrated volt-var optimization (IVVO): A capability for the distribution business to utilize hardware in the field to optimize voltage and improve the efficiency of the advanced distribution management system.
B. Secure grid communications via the Field Area Network (FAN): A private and secure communications network connecting the application, customer meters, and field devices via a mesh.
C. Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI): An integrated system of advanced meters, communications networks and data management systems that enable two-way communications between utilities’ business and operational data systems and the meters
To accomplish this large multi-year strategic initiative, we utilized a combination of frameworks and delivery methodologies
At the beginning of every wave, we conduct an exhaustive blue-printing exercise identifying all the business processes that would be need to be enhanced or modified. This exercise culminates with an end-to-end business process mapping effort and creation of traceability matrices (vision, goals and objectives, business requirements, functional requirements, technical requirements).
At this point the delivery method changed to an agile process. DevOps planned program increments (utilizing items from product backlog) and deliveries via multiple sprints to reach a minimum viable product (MVP).
Turning attention to technological processes, this initiative brought about incorporation of many new technologies and tech stack. With strong relationships with strategic partners, we stood up AWS cloud instances, and internal cloud instances. This effort also leveraged offerings from Oracle, FD Technologies, Olameter, Schneider Electric2to establish data transfer mechanisms between these vendors, environments – on premise, and cloud, batch and real-time. In addition, there was also
Significant effort spent on data extraction, data transformation, data correlation, data aggregation (ETL) and loading processes
What Are Some Of The Technological Trends Which Excite You For The Future Of The It Industry?
The most exciting buzz around the IT industry is the awareness, growth, and potential possibilities of Generative AI. There is cautious excitement in the business and technology leadership with a focus on early adoption for leapfrog business advantage. These capabilities will mature much faster than previous technologies leading to ‘AI as a service’ model being conceptualized and built. These capabilities will be built in addition to all the automation efforts– robotic process automation (RPA) that is in-flight.
In the Utility industry, the other exciting aspects are
A. Acceptance of cloud computing and
B. Full stacks development.
Traditionally, utilities have shied away from cloud computing due to regulatory constraints and capitalization rules.
The conventional thought process has been to integrate a COTS (Commercial Off-the shelf) product into the existing eco-system. This mentality is quickly changing. I am witnessing a shift in the IT organization within utilities. They are becoming more self-sufficient with a true DevOps full stack platform development model and mindset.
With our Grid Modernization effort – Advanced Grid Intelligence and Security (AGIS), the smarter AMI meters provide a treasure trove of data. I along with Xcel Energy leadership am excited to engage in “Big data and analytics” initiatives to create valuable business insights. The opportunity is ripe with potential to create new product and pricing models.
To sum it all up – these strategic initiatives are a big step in realizing our strategic goal and commitment to be carbon free by 2050 in the state of Minnesota. I am excited to see the determination and resolve of our talent and leadership to get us to that goal!
