BEIJING, May 4 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- CCID Consulting, China's leading research, consulting and IT outsourcing service provider, and the first Chinese consulting firm listed in Hong Kong, reviews today the status of integration applications in China's Power Enterprises. CCID calls for information integration in the industry to address current issues such as lack of central planning and standards in applications.
Through years of continuous development, IT applications by power enterprises in China have reached a certain scale. However, because power enterprises are developed independently, and operate and manage their own information systems, there is no central planning or a general standard within the industry. This has resulted in many problems. Many versions of a same software operate side by side, leading to "information islands", which makes it very difficult for enterprises to bring their information systems into full play. CCID Consulting believes that the application of information integration will be the best solution to the above problems.
As the State further deepens power system reforms and as external factors of uncertainty induce competitions following China's accession into the WTO, domestic power enterprises have now set higher and higher requirements to their operational management and services implementation efficiency. They need to effectively integrate large numbers of heterogeneous information systems and improve data interaction, information sharing and business processing efficiency between systems, thus enhancing the ability of information systems to serve and support enterprises' businesses and management. Therefore, information integration applications will become the focus of information system building for power enterprises during the Eleventh Five-Year Plan period.
By complexity of technological applications and services, information integration for power enterprises can be divided into 3 stages: basic, intermediate and advanced, as shown below.
In the "basic" stage, information integration implementations start with "portal integration" applications which have a rather short implementation cycle and relatively simple technological applications. Enterprises' information portal becomes the "general entrance" for all kinds of information system. All kinds of interfaces can be exhibited in the information portal in a centralized manner. Through SSO, unified authorization access certification and other technologies, to achieve unified access to different systems interfaces. This greatly improves the use efficiency of information systems and saves the time of switchover between interfaces when several systems are in concurrent operation.
In the "intermediate" stage, "data integration" and "application integration" are mainly undertaken from the two aspects of data and application systems.
"Data integration" is to centralize and gather dispersed business data from systems of affiliated companies through setting up regional data centers, and establish unified data warehouses with grid enterprises or generation enterprises as the center, thus maintaining the high degree of consistency and reliability of business system data. It is also possible to use the integrated data resources of data warehouses and various scientific and effective analytical and statistical algorithms to perform theme analyses based on different businesses and assist corporate executives to make rational strategic decisions.
"Application integration" is to use hub, star or bus architectures to establish message broker mechanism-based message platforms and make them a "link" between enterprises' internal information systems and play a role as a "bridge" for the solution of difficult data exchange between systems. It achieves orderly data circulation between systems. It thoroughly addresses the growingly serious problems of "sectional system segregation and data islands" that currently exist in power enterprises.
Through integration applications in the previous two stages, power enterprises have basically achieved interface unification, data centralization and smooth data flow between system. However, integration brings about greater data storage risks and unprecedented data capacity expansion at group headquarters. Therefore, there is a need to use effective storage integration technology to store and manage business data in a unified way. There is also a need to store data level by level according to their importance so that data storage security and storage equipment utilization efficiency can be improved.
The application of "data integration" and "application integration" bring power enterprises' information integration to a peak. Driven by the demand for "business synergy and conglomerate management", establishing "business workflow" integration platforms for enterprises will become the main task during the third stage of information integration applications. According to business workflows, the services functions of several systems will be combined. On the basis of data sharing between systems and driven by the "services engine", cross-system business operations will be achieved. Dynamic monitoring will also be realized in the data transmission, message routing/conversion and cross-system business execution in the whole business workflow. While achieving enterprises' internal information integration, external corporate resources (such as application integration between grid enterprises' marketing system and banks' system, and between generation enterprises' material management system and suppliers' information system) on the power industry will be integrated so that business data can smoothly flow between different enterprises' information systems.
Currently, information integration technologies have been successfully used in enterprises including Beijing Electric Power Corporation and Tianjin Electric Power Corporation. As applications deepen, information integration now plays a more important role. It has also become a "major weapon" for solving data islands in power enterprises, improving "chimney-like" system layout and lowering the operating cost of IT. It lays a solid foundation for establishing a new IT environment of "powerful information control, comprehensive system interconnection and business process continuity".
About CCID Consulting
CCID Consulting Co., Ltd. (also known as CCID Consulting), the first Chinese consulting firm listed in the Growth Enterprise Market of the Stock Exchange (GEM) of Hong Kong (stock code: HK08235), is a direct affiliate of the China Center for Information Industry Development (hereinafter known as CCID Group). Headquartered in Beijing, CCID Consulting has so far set up branch offices in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Harbin, with over 300 professional consultants and industry experts. The Company's business scope has covered over 200 large- and medium-sized cities in China. Apart from home market development, CCID Consulting is establishing international cooperation links across the United States, the Asia-Pacific region and Europe, by setting up agents in the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore, Italy and Russia, with the aim of going global.
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