Intergraph Offers “SmartGrid” Approach for Dynamic Utility Networks

A little over a year after Intergraph was taken private by three private equity firms Intergraph is building success in their Utility & Communication (U&C) division, a group just recently re-organized within the company. Although the company admits that it has taken some time to align their product technology with their vertical market sectors, it believes that customers are now embracing their direction. Sales in the U&C division reached $76 million in 2007 and projected to go higher this year. Strong growth in Europe is bolstering sales and partnering with large systems integrators like Siemens, Capgemini and Bearing Point allows Intergraph to provide targeted solutions with core technology.

Intergraph has offered a steady path for existing FRAMME customers to move to G/Technology and has moved five to six clients within the last year. Currently they have about 200 customers on G/Technology, which provides the foundation for several modules including water, gas, communications and electric and specific applications in outage management. According to the company, their SmartGrid technology is a means to “integrate communications networks with the power grid in order to create an electricity-communications superhighway capable of monitoring its own health at all times, alerting officials immediately when problems arise and automatically taking corrective action.”

Intergraph relies heavily on Oracle Spatial for data management but does not currently use any of Oracle’s network models feeling that their experience in the utility industry offers a better solution. The company has also begun to offer integration with Business Objects.