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)