With the continuous development and deep integration of energy technology and information technologies such as IoT, big data, cloud computing and mobile Internet, a digital revolution in energy industry is coming silently and will facilitate the industry to further enhance its overall competitiveness and release huge new capacity.

Industry practitioners estimate a new output of the global market of RMB8.6 trillion in ten years in the power industry alone. Accenture, the consulting company, predicts that by 2020, the total market size will exceed USD940 billion after the digital upgrading of China's energy industry. So the CEOs of some multinational companies are optimistic and believe that "digitalization of the energy industry will be the biggest change in the next decade".

In China, such a great revolution has seen some favorable developments under the impetus of various aspects. Some energy companies and technologically innovative companies have started forward-looking commercial exploration and pilot, and captured the industrial markets ahead of time.

iSoftStone Information Technology (Group) Co., Ltd. (iSoftStone) has made deployment ahead of schedule in this regard and has achieved good results. As an innovative technology service provider, it focuses on the digitalization of enterprises and cities, and, through the technological innovations, helps enterprises and cities to continuously improve their efficiency and enhance their competitiveness.

In the field of energy, iSoftStone has established a joint venture with Beijing Guodian Lianhe Business Network Co., Ltd., to provide all-round IT services and information solutions for the electric power industry. Since its establishment, the joint venture has provided powerful digital upgrading support for automation and informatization of State Grid, China Southern Power Grid, Power Generation Group, and other large enterprises in other industries. Wherein, the informatization application covers 23 provinces and cities in China, and the automation application covers 7 provinces and cities in China.

These initiatives have greatly driven the upgrading of domestic energy industry, and made some enterprises internationally competitive to a certain extent in digitalization. Seeing the industry development, iSoftStone has become a leading solution provider for energy industry in China. In particular, the identity and role of iSoftStone as a digital innovation partner has been widely recognized by the industry.

Comprehensive layout 

The digital upgrading of energy industry is a complicated and slow process, and industry practitioners at home and abroad generally believe that the most core area involves two aspects of transformation.。

The first is the transformation of industry products and services. With the support of ICT technology, the energy infrastructure should be fully digitized. For example, the design and construction of wind turbines and wind farms will rely more on the technical processing based on cloud platform and IoT. This will also make related services move towards digitalization; the second is the digital transformation and upgrading of enterprise management. Traditional enterprise management informatization means the standardization and optimization of ERP, CRM and others, but now a transparent, shared, sensitive, and efficient digital management system is desired on the premise of controllable risks, such that the interaction between enterprises and customers, suppliers, and employees can be more efficient.

It is by providing comprehensive solutions that iSoftStone has found the key to digital upgrading of the industry.

From the consulting service at the early stage, iSoftStone has always provided information consulting and automatic planning of new energy power stations for enterprises. Then, in term of IT services, integration services and value-added services, iSoftStone has rich experience in IT application development services, power distribution integration projects, urban energy management and operation, etc.

For products and solutions, iSoftStone has four series products and fifteen applications. The products include the user data service gateway and terminal products. There is distribution network geographic information system, power grid enterprise production management department, power plant production management system, group-type enterprise integrated management and control equal information products, as well as automation products such as power grid management system and PSM2000 automation system. Crucially, iSoftStone owns many independent innovation patents out of these products.

In terms of solutions, there are energy management solutions, 3D Gis platform solutions, BI analysis and decision aids solutions, integrated management and control solutions, new energy remote CDC solutions, data management information systems of grass-roots enterprises, and so on.

Combining such comprehensive capabilities can enable energy enterprises to realize digital upgrading of products and services while optimizing the structure and improving decision-making efficiency from the internal management.

This makes iSoftStone a long-term partner of digital upgrading of energy enterprises. In the cooperation with China Guodian Corporation, iSoftStone has helped it build the whole information infrastructure platform since its 12th Five-Year Plan, especially the statistical data platform, which covers from the headquarters to the level-2 units and level-3 units of China Guodian Corporation, bringing good scale benefits to the whole group.

iSoftStone has begun to further implement the work since the 13th Five-Year Plan of Guodian Corporation. For example, in terms of big data, iSoftStone moves from data integration to application integration, which turns big data into an important decision aid for analysis and decision-making, and realizes interactive query and real-time stream processing of various business data, thus maximizing the value of data in the process of enterprise operation and management.

Refined upgrading

With comprehensive solutions as an effective means, iSoftStone also helps enterprises to achieve refined upgrading through continuous digitalization-based innovations, so that the overall digital transformation of enterprises has always maintained the international advanced level.

In China Guodian Group, iSoftStone established an integrated information platform, data acquisition and exchange system, production and operation control system, ERP construction system, etc. In China Southern Power Grid, iSoftStone assisted in creating a regional unified GIS system, integrated operation and distribution system, etc. In Ningbo and Hangzhou distribution terminals of State Grid, iSoftStone provided solutions. With the further progress, the digital upgrading has gradually penetrated into all levels within enterprises, thus making the management, procedures and many other aspects more and more refined and scientific.

Especially in the safety that the industry attaches the greatest importance to, iSoftStone has made a lot of innovations. In the past, grass-roots business departments often chose to instruct their employees to implement safety measures one by one through detailed operation manuals, and checked them offline; but after the adoption of IoT, real-time data and mobile internet technology, iSoftStone can help the management department of an enterprise to know the situation in real time on the computer side, while the front-line employees can process the transmission of real-time data through intelligent terminal scanners on the QR code of the device.

This mode can predict some potential safety hazards in advance from the application and analysis of big data, thus migrating the risks and lowering the expenditure of inspection fees. To some extent, this is the way to change the workflow through digital upgrading.

Additionally, iSoftStone helps enterprises improve their refined management through the application of big data. On the one hand, market analysis and quotation analysis are done for partners through big data given the gradual opening of the power market and the gradual formation of power trading system. On the other hand, there is the trend that mobile Internet, IoT and other technologies are continuously integrated with the power industry, big data is used to analyze the cost refinement for partners, such that real-time data and management data are fully integrated to continuously strengthen innovation capability.

With the deepening and meticulous digitization, iSoftStone can gradually reproduce the case to other types of enterprises in the energy field, and provide tailored solutions according to the actual situation of enterprises. For iSoftStone, it has been accumulated continuously and has taken another step to realize the vision of being world-class technical service providers and preferred partners of global customers; for corporate partners, they also have come to a new stage to international competitiveness through cooperation with iSoftStone.