El Paso
Electric
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) applications.
Hardware includes workstations, thin clients, laptops, laser jet
printers, cashiering workstations, PDA's, Meter Reading hand held
devices, mobile dispatch devices, network routers, network
switches, network hubs, production test systems and process control
computers. The scope of work includes, but is not limited to:
• Coordination of IT
Procurement
• EPE End User satisfaction follow-up and surveys
• EPE End User training coordination
• Product order information, price quotes and status
questions
• Incident diagnosis and resolution
• Dispatching services to Level 2 and Level 3
• Coordination with EPE Facilities Services Department on moves,
adds and changes of IT Assets for office relocations
• Coordination with EPE Communications, on moves, adds and changes
of communication circuits
• Moves, adds and change coordination of IT Asset upgrades
• Incident coordination and escalation
• IT management reporting
• Maintaining an accurate IT Asset Management Database
• Maintaining an Incident Management Database
Local/Wide Area Network
(LAN/WAN) Support
DYONYX provides full Network support for EPE's privately owned
SONIC ring and all network components between the data center and
the remote offices. Network support consists of both Shared
Services resources and onsite support that monitors and support all
EPE network devices (switches, routers, firewalls, VPN, and other
network-centric appliances) 7 days per week, 24 hours per day and
respond to alarms that are generated by the monitoring systems
and/or network incidents that are reported to the Service Desk.
Asset
Management
DYONYX currently provides asset management services and is
responsible for hand receipt control of all assets. The asset
management personnel are also responsible for receiving, storing,
issuing, and tracking of all computers, software and peripherals.
Server and Storage Operations - The primary server operations
management responsibility at EPE is to ensure that EPE End Users
are provided access to required data and applications in a timely
and efficient manner. Daily responsibilities for this function
include but are not limited to:
• Mail configuration and
administration
• Server hardware and operating system as well as storage
subsystem monitoring, Incident diagnosis and resolution
• Follow current EPE change control policies and procedures
• Server and storage configurations will meet with EPE documented
disaster recovery policies and procedures
• Perform server and storage capacity planning
• Work with the EPE IT governance team on planning emerging
projects
• Scheduled maintenance or downtime and unscheduled downtime
• Operating systems, systems and security patch management
Security
The DYONYX Shared Services Security team reviews Intrusion
Detection/Prevention Systems and system logs and provides CISSP
level security expertise. DYONYX provides EPE access to ongoing
security team involvement in strategic planning and
compliance/audit reviews. The DYONYX shared services model allows
EPE to obtain top-level security expertise without the full costs
of hiring this expert directly, on a full time basis.
To learn more, visit www.dyonyx.com
