CPS
Energy
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Client
Profile
CPS Energy is the nation's largest municipally owned energy
company providing both natural gas and electric service. Acquired
by the City of San Antonio in 1942, CPS Energy serves more than
630,000 electric customers and more than 310,000 natural gas
customers in and around the eighth largest city in the U. S. CPS
Energy bills rank among the lowest of the nation's largest cities,
and the company has earned the highest financial ratings of any
electric system in the nation. More CPS Energy information can be
found on the Web at www.cpsenergy.com.
Executive
Summary
In September of 2005, DYONYX was selected by CPS Energy of San
Antonio to lead their endeavor to develop and implement a formal
Security Program applicable to a number of their critical assets.
The Security Program will address the forthcoming requirements to
conform to the Cyber Security Standards being developed by the
North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC). Mr. Fred James,
Vice President Operations and Maintenance for CPS Energy, said that
"CPS Energy has recognized that the security of our critical
infrastructures associated with the transmission grid and
generation control systems is paramount in providing reliable
service to our customers. The development and implementation of the
Security Program will provide a structured set of processes that
not only will enhance security while meeting the compliance
requirements of the upcoming Cyber Security Standard, but also will
provide improved operations resiliency benefiting all
customers."
Mr. Ron Blume, Energy Practice Vice
President for DYONYX, noted that, recognizing the cross functional
nature of the planned policies and procedures, CPS Energy senior
management's support of the company-wide project was essential. He
added, "It is refreshing to work with an organization that is
passionate about security and committed to its successful
implementation."
To learn more, visit www.dyonyx.com
Client Profile
El Paso Electric Company (EPE) is a medium sized integrated
electric utility operating in the Rio Grande Valley in west Texas
and southern New Mexico with over 347,000 customers. With
approximately 1,000 employees, EPE has an installed net generation
capacity of 1,500 MW including about 16% interests in the Palo
Verde nuclear plant. While EPE is moderate in size when compared to
many corporations, as an electric utility, the technology
infrastructures are very complex incorporating real-time systems,
large customer databases, multi-layered geographic information
systems, communication and dispatch systems, and comprehensive
facilities management systems all supporting the delivery of
electricity to the customers. This environment, coupled with the
key responsibility to operate and maintain the critical electric
grid infrastructures for the region, sets the stage for the need of
a robust set of information system infrastructures. These
infrastructures, which include hardware architecture, application
system architecture, network architecture, and supporting
organizational resources, need to incorporate appropriate
technology, integrated design concepts, and efficient processes to
meet the needs of the corporation.
Executive Summary
EPE retained the services of DYONYX to perform a cooperative
technical examination and assessment of various aspects of the
current technical environment considered by leadership to be of
high importance and worthy of focus. Our team concentrated on the
methods and support of functional interfaces for core business
applications, the design of EPE's LAN/WAN infrastructure, server
strategies and storage architecture, desktop and software
management, and secure communications.
Upon completion of this assessment DYONYX was awarded the contract
to virtualize the EPE server environment to reduce the physical
footprint required to provide current business functions while
minimizing any disruptions to the current production environment.
The intent of this consolidation was to reduce the physical
footprint only and not change the logical infrastructure design as
EPE was preparing to move their data center to a new location.
DYONYX was asked to respond to an RFP on the data center relocation
to determine if continuing to support their IT internally, hosting
their services in a third party hosting facility or fully
outsourcing all of IT was the most cost effective solution. Upon
completion of the RFP, DYONYX was requested to respond to a full
outsource RFP, which was also awarded to DYONYX.
End User Support
DYONYX provides technical personal computer, laptop and software
assistance to all EPE personnel. Service Desk Level I personnel
located in our centralized ITIL compliant Service Desk respond to
employee questions and requests for service. Software support
includes operating system, word processing, e-mail, presentation
graphics, spreadsheet, drawing, illustration, file compression,
workflow management, database, networking, web browser, and
industry specific Commercial off the Shelf (COTS)
