The research firm claims that by aligning business strategy, processes, and information assets, EA can deliver better overall business decision-making, business-IT synergy, resource utilization, governance control, and speed to innovation.

As the pace of smart grid deployments accelerates, the challenge of effective business analysis and strategy development in a disruptive market environment will place enormous demands on utilities’ supporting information infrastructure, said Pike.

Research director Bob Gohn said: “Significant transformation requires different modes of thinking and methods of problem solving. Utility executives will have to make better business strategy choices more rapidly, requiring them to better understand and predict the outcomes of business choices before acting. EA offers a way forward for utilities to build a smart grid that can be responsive to rapidly changing industry conditions.”

At its core, the research firm’s analysis finds, the challenge for utilities is to avoid a haphazard approach to smart grid implementation by avoiding the accidental architecture characterized by point solutions that were not planned with the notion of integration or future uses in mind. The likeliest outcome of such a haphazard approach is the utility’s architecting itself down a potentially blind alley.

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