AMI Systems. This solution acts as a gateway to a central system, presenting aggregated and validated meter information to the back office as if there was only one AMI system in use. This synchronization of all the AMI systems, inclusive of issued data, meter reading data, work order data, point of service data, and event data, ensures that all steps of the end-to-end processes between the meter and the backend systems work together smoothly without replicating the systems of record in another middleware system. This reduces a utility’s total cost of ownership for AMI infrastructure.

Potential Applications of Unified and Synchronized AMI

There are endless possibilities for potential applications that could be derived from unified, synchronized AMI. Here are just a few creative examples:

■ The ability to use meter data to locate an outage and restore service, as well as to identify opportunities to optimize the distribution network.

■ The ability to use meter data to detect tampering or theft at a customer site, or to use in identifying and prioritizing asset management initiatives across the network.

■ The ability to track data and identify patterns of customer usage against specific weather conditions and provide customers the ability to receive an automated alert on their usage, along with helpful conservation tips.

With AMI technology, a strategic technical and commercial approach, and imagination, today’s utilities will be prepared to take on a whole new way of improving their businesses tomorrow.

The MDUS not only unifies and synchronizes meter data from the various AMI systems in use across the utility’s physical network, it also detects events that have occurred in the AMI network and manages commands from the back office. Events might include meter or equipment failure or tampering, while commands would include meter connection or disconnection.

To execute these activities seamlessly, and still protect the utility’s investment in its information technology infrastructure, the MDUS must employ the latest integration techniques, namely an enterprise services oriented architecture and robust message handling. An enterprise services oriented architecture integrates people, information and business processes across organizational and technological boundaries through the use of abstracted enterprise application objects and enterprise web services. These capabilities help reduce a utility’s total cost of ownership associated with AMI enablement and provide a foundational platform to manage change and spur innovation.

Finally, one should not underestimate how well “beginning with the end in mind” serves AMI enablement. Promoting the back office from an afterthought to the forefront of an AMI solution assures accurate and timely billing, reduced service response times, and a higher quality customer experience overall. But let us consider the market perspective, specifically, that of the deregulated environment. In the deregulated market, enterprises responsible for the meter and the meter reading are separate from those that “own” the customers and the commercial

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