Open systems procurement: a migration strategy

The current process for procuring energy management systems is inadequate for the procurement of open systems. Although one can point to cases of successful projects, present practices are largely responsible for electric utilities deploying systems which are not fully satisfactory and rapidly become technologically obsolete, and for vendors having serious problems in performing to contracts and surviving financially. These current practices are examined as a basis for identifying new open systems control center procurement strategies for the industry based on the concepts of migration and prototyping. The author stresses that only time will tell if the ideas presented together with those contributed by others adequately address the serious problems described