Edenor reduces outages using cloud computing technology

The largest electricity distribution company in Argentina uses cloud computing technology from Red Hat to provide real-time data on performance that prevents network interruptions.

Empresa Distribuidora y Comercializadora Norte (Edenor) provides energy for nine million people.

Three years ago, Edenor started to improve its service by reducing the duration and frequency of outages, improving operational efficiency, and providing more timely, accurate information to customers.

The company needed to simplify and update the complex network of connections between its systems and applications, including for billing and customer care, outage management, asset management, enterprise resource planning and field service management.

Edenor’s systems needed to send tasks quickly and reliably to its core technology. “For example, our change documentation service receives 35,000 updates to improve prioritisation from 800 routine, ongoing technical tasks,” says Leonardo Corino, head of the technical process department at Edenor. “That service needs up-to-date information to help prevent accidents or electrical problems that might affect public safety.”

Edenor’s existing integration solution lacked the stability and data portability to support these complex services and systems. The company wanted to not only use more responsive, adaptable integration technology to simplify connections between its applications, services, APIs, and systems, but also automate processes for faster issue resolution and optimal resource use.

Using open-source tech

This new technology would be supported by new organisational models focused on agile, collaborative approaches like DevOps. Edenor focused on finding an open-source solution to integration challenges, benefiting from emerging technology and approaches while avoiding reliance on any one vendor.

The company decided to use Red Hat technology to gain the benefits of open-source innovation – and meet its cloud computing and other technology objectives – while maintaining the reliability and support access needed for its service.

“Red Hat offered us the technology to create a reliable platform that could solve our integration challenges in a way that was unmatched by other providers, and the experience to help us learn new ways of working, like DevOps, to simultaneously transform our culture,” says Luis Lenkiewicz, chief information officer at Edenor.

Edenor is now using Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Integration technology to provide real-time data across teams and regions, scaled to support hundreds of thousands of daily events without affecting system performance. Edenor has been able to reduce the duration and frequency of outages and resolve issues faster.

“During our initial deployment, we were introduced to the concept of containers, which was unfamiliar,” says Marcelo Moras, integration architect at Edenor. “We quickly realized the scalability benefits, and Red Hat OpenShift is now used to support some of our critical integrations.”

Edenor’s initial implementation focused on migrating five key production services, including mobile monitoring, online transactions, and vehicle monitoring. After successfully migrating these services, Edenor moved one of its main integrations – between its low- and medium-voltage outage management system and its field service management system – to OpenShift and Red Hat Integration.

With each service hosted in its own container, Edenor can automatically scale to meet peaks in demand without delays or other performance issues. Other benefits include:

• Scalable, reliable integration to support more than 800,000 daily events
• Development time reduced from months to weeks
• Improved customer service with 70% faster issue resolution
• Insight from technology experts on containers, agile and DevOps

“We’ve achieved the scalability we needed to solve problems and evolve in the face of changes,” says María Alejandra Trozzi, deputy manager, solutions architecture. “Thanks to OpenShift, we have better data access, insight and control.”

Alerts about outages or repairs to electrical networks are now sent much more quickly – In less than 10 seconds, rather than three minutes – to field maintenance teams who can access more reliable real-time information to resolve issues. Incident response times have been reduced by 70%.

Trozzi says: “This transformation was challenging in terms of both technical and cultural changes. We were introducing new concepts like containers and micro services. Red Hat provided us with the right tools to overcome these challenges.

“Their attitude and willingness to work with us to adjust the technical design of our new architecture created a human partnership that was key to our success and the results we’ve achieved.”

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