Power the future, sustainably

The foundational strategy to help energy and utility organizations drive sustainable
innovation, grow resilience, and exceed customer expectations
Accelerate your journey
 02

Fueling
Energy and utility organizations provide the fuel of our VMware and Intel have deep experience of partnering
society. From enabling simple moments of everyday with energy and utility organizations worldwide,
family life to powering the most complex of business helping them overcome these complex technology

everyday innovation initiatives, it’s a relationship that revolves

around reliability, transparency, and trust.
challenges and achieve their business goals.

Our virtualization and automation technologies,

life
But today the sector faces unprecedented challenges: and future-ready edge infrastructure, enable energy
from the geopolitical events that disrupt supply and and utility businesses to rapidly modernize and
pricing and the sustainability challenges that call for simplify IT and OT, in support of more sustainable,
transformative action, to the rapidly evolving demands secure, flexible, efficient, and innovative operations.
of customers, the increasing use of bi-directional grids, Our technologies will also standardize your
growing cybersecurity threats to critical infrastructure, operations, helping you scale your business
and so much more besides. more easily and adapt to market changes faster.
All these pressures demand that energy and With our support you can accelerate the deployment
utility businesses – across sectors from fossil fuels, of new solutions and services that will exceed customer
to renewables, to nuclear power – are more efficient, expectations and fuel a more sustainable future for all.
agile, sustainable, and transparent than ever before.
Technology is pivotal in gaining these capabilities,
but companies with aging infrastructure and multiple
levels of resource constraints find it difficult to drive
change cost-effectively at speed – especially in an
ever-changing and increasingly complex industry.
 03

Contents

1. Beat legacy tech with automation

2. Case study: Drax Group

3. Collaborate and innovate in real-time

4. Put sustainability and transparency at the heart, always

5. Digital innovation for a greener future

6. Modernize, while securing critical infrastructure

7: Case study: Publiacqua; SOCAR; and vPAC Alliance

8. Create outstanding services with modern apps

9. Your partnership for success

 04

Beat legacy tech

with automation

The opportunity To overcome today’s challenges and advance

toward sustainability goals, energy and utility
organizations must adapt – moving with increasing
speed and efficiency.

But legacy infrastructures and applications are

a considerable barrier to progress: slowing
collaboration, innovation, and time-to-market,
and increasing operational risk. The complexity
and inconsistency of an aging technology landscape
can prevent a business from quickly identifying areas
in which processes can be improved: such as through
the reduction in maintenance costs and downtime,
which can otherwise sap resources.

Ultimately, this outdated landscape will have a

negative impact on the services and prices that a
company can offer to its customers, with implications
for future brand perception and customer satisfaction.

Organizations that overcome this challenge,

however, have the opportunity to bring simplified,
consistent, future-ready capabilities across both IT
and OT environments: enabling a pre-emptive and
proactive posture from which to consistently improve
processes, innovation, and competitiveness.
 05

Power sustainable growth VMware and Intel can help standardize and Machine-learning modules will then be able to
consolidate the digital foundation across IT and OT take real-time information from sensors and run
with VMware and Intel environments – helping energy and utility businesses it alongside historical data to predict failure and
to overcome legacy infrastructure challenges and schedule maintenance: which can all be controlled
connect modern capabilities to critical energy from a single pane of glass.
systems. Furthermore, our technologies will work
Intel’s continued innovation in predictive maintenance
seamlessly in your existing network with legacy
is leading to exciting opportunities that empower
devices, so you can transition at your own pace.
energy and utility companies to reduce downtime,
A consistent, software-defined infrastructure – forecast maintenance needs with far greater
including a software-defined data center from precision, and keep people and assets safe.
VMware, for example – is the foundation upon
This automation strategy will also have intrinsic
which you can leverage VMware and Intel
sustainability benefits – enabling organizations to
solutions to accelerate process automation
continually identify key areas in which operational
across distributed environments.
efficiencies will reduce resource usage and emissions.
 06

Case study: Drax Group

Accelerating toward a
carbon-negative future

The opportunity The solution

Drax Group is a UK-based energy company that The business developed Drax Target Architecture,
operates across renewable electricity generation, a modernization initiative designed to shed the
electricity sales to business customers, and compressed limitations of existing systems, streamline access
wood pellet production and supply to third parties. to data sources, and help the IT team develop new
functionalities faster.
In 2019, Drax announced an ambitious goal to be
carbon negative by 2030. The company needed to The Drax Target Architecture features three interlinked
adapt its strategy and operations to pursue this zero- technology pillars, or Hubs. The Integration Hub
carbon vision. That meant building a more flexible connects dozens of on-premises and cloud apps,
infrastructure that could respond faster to changing then funnels data from multiple sources to the
business needs, and consolidating disparate data Data Hub.
sources to make better informed decisions.
The Microservices Hub, built together with VMware,
helps the IT team develop new applications faster,
using a micro-services-based architecture built on
Kubernetes technology.

Built on VMware Tanzu® Mission Control™, the

Microservices Hub is an orchestration application
that centralizes and simplifies Kubernetes cluster
management, ensuring the operations team
can apply consistent security and governance
guardrails while giving developers self-service
and quick access to clusters.
 07

The results 9 months

to return-on-investment

“We’re increasing productivity, The VMware Tanzu® product and services portfolio
met the company’s requirements for a simple, out-of-
enhancing our skills and doing the-box solution that could get up and running fast.
a lot more with less effort, to
The Drax team has transformed its approach to app
higher quality, and we have development, now able to deliver discrete, reusable
the inherent benefit of reuse.” blocks of capabilities that can be refreshed easily and
built out to deliver scalable, future-proof applications.
Mark Leonard, Director of Global Business
Development at Drax Group The Drax Target Architecture has supported the delivery
of new, growth-enabling services. For example, its
solution built on VMware Tanzu® technology has enabled
the company to launch an industry-leading digital service
that provides business customers with greater visibility
and management of energy consumption in their electric
vehicle fleets.

With faster application development, better use

of business-critical data, and improved decisions,
Drax is moving closer to its carbon-negative ambitions.

Read more here

 08

Collaborate and
innovate in real-time

The opportunity But for these integrations and collaborations to

be successful, it must be possible to rapidly share,
analyze, and act upon data in real-time – out to the
most remote edge locations – while confidently
ensuring data security, sovereignty, and compliance
at all times.

The challenge for many energy and utility companies

Today’s leading energy and utility companies is rooted in inflexible legacy applications, siloed
understand that, by themselves, they cannot initiatives, and insufficiently flexible infrastructure
shape a future of reliable, future-ready, to take advantage of real-time data insights and
sustainable energy management. modern technologies.
Some are pursuing mergers and acquisitions to Organizations realize that private cloud is a vital part
bring more sustainable energy solutions into their of the answer. But in a cloud-only approach, latency
organizations. Some are also playing a more active is a challenge to real-time data sharing; and hidden
role in leading change across wider sustainable cloud costs – such as those faced when moving data
ecosystems – such as the way that an electricity and workloads – can be a concern.
supplier might collaborate with smart-city leaders
and vehicle OEMs to enable electric-vehicle charging The answer? A hybrid approach from edge to private
infrastructure. And others may even be looking to cloud for managing real-time and non-real-time
take this infrastructure a step further by leveraging applications, in addition to data sharing supported by
vehicle-to-grid (V2G) to create a virtual power plant zero-trust security, has been shown to be the most
(VPP) marketplace, providing even greater resilience successful way forward in supporting agile, data-
to future natural disasters. driven collaboration.
 09

Power sustainable growth With solutions and support from VMware and Intel, With this seamless connection from the edge
energy and utility companies can migrate to any private to the cloud, energy and utility organizations
with VMware and Intel cloud and between private clouds without recoding get the flexibility to ensure faster, more agile data
their apps; modernize their infrastructure; and operate analysis and operations, as well as faster and more
consistently across data center, edge, and any private effective AI/ML model training and feedback loops
cloud environment through a single platform. – driving better customer experiences and greater
business value.
Leveraging the same compute, network, storage,
and Kubernetes stack not only offers operational Together, VMware and Intel deliver solutions
efficiencies but also reduces complexity and drives that enable the IT organizations within energy
cost transparency and savings – money that can and utility organizations to confidently integrate
be reinvested in further innovation. edge and cloud: delivering real-time data analytics
and providing the necessary technology foundation
for collaboration, supported by AI and ML.
 10

Put sustainability and transparency

at the heart, always

of the energy system – presented an Action Plan

The opportunity to highlight how “new technologies can help improve
the efficient use of energy resources, facilitate the
integration of renewables into the grid, and save
costs for EU consumers and energy companies.”
Organizations in the energy and utility sectors find
themselves at the center of converging demands Energy and utility organizations are at the epicenter
for a more sustainable future. of this change, with a greater ability and responsibility
to make an impact on carbon footprints than most other
On the one hand, many customers are now voting industries. This presents a unique challenge: one in
with their feet and moving to suppliers who can which they must eliminate inefficient processes and
provide more sustainable energy solutions, along reduce carbon footprint across a complex ecosystem
with the transparency to continually prove they that encompasses multiple sites, infrastructure,
are operating responsibly. devices, vendors, technologies, compliance demands,
and processes.
On the other, there are growing macro political
forces. For example, in late 2022, the European But, for those that get their sustainability strategy
Green Deal – which is pursuing a deep transformation right, there is a huge opportunity to meet customer
expectations and increase advantage over
their competitors.
 11

Power sustainable growth

with VMware and Intel

At VMware, we see virtualization technology as Edge Stack is being used in the energy/utility sector
an accelerator for sustainable operations – and today to modernize and digitize grid infrastructure –
one that comes with significant business benefits for example by virtualizing primary and secondary
substation workloads. VMware is also working on
Our technology portfolio, including our multi-cloud developing open standards for secondary substations
offering, helps energy and utility companies to by contributing to the Edge for Smart Secondary
reduce the environmental impact of data centers, Substation (E4S) Alliance, and working with leaders
infrastructure operations, and data management – in the industry to drive a shift from hardware-based
by bringing increased visibility into IT/OT operations to digitized operations.
“[VMware Cloud] will build and offering ways to enhance productivity across
Intel is also helping energy and utility businesses
IT and the wider organization. After all, you can’t
our ability to respond to forge a path to sustainability, by providing sustainable
manage what you can’t see. VMware makes container
new needs and deliver and host energy visible, enabling benchmarks you
solutions that enable them to capture and analyze
operational data in near real-time – driving visibility
new services in terms of can act on.
and oversight.
compliance, sustainability, VMware Edge Stack helps energy and utility Leveraging more data with edge intelligence
and the green economy.” companies to reduce their infrastructure footprint gives businesses the flexible controls and deeper
to the minimum with a single platform that covers perspectives they need to solve unique challenges
Mauro Cacciafani, Architecture, software-defined connectivity, real-time and non- and become sustainable leaders of energy ecosystems.
Risk and Security Manager, Publiacqua real-time application management, virtualized
infrastructure and device management, and
security governance all-in-one.
 12

Digital innovation for a greener future

Focus on: The EU plans to revolutionize its power grid in order to Case study: Iberdrola
meet future green energy demands and achieve its goal
Grid modernization of reducing emissions 55% by 2030. Iberdrola is a multinational electric utility company
based in Bilbao, Spain. In collaboration with a group
As such, it recently published its “Digitalizing the Energy of industry partners and technological companies –
System-EU Action Plan,” which has goals including the including Intel – it is driving the development of a
installation of solar photovoltaic panels on the roofs of new digital platform for secondary substations (SSP).
all commercial buildings by 2027 and all new residential
buildings by 2029. Based on edge computing, the platform will
allow the company to continue leading the
Electricity grid modernization will involve an investment digital transformation of its network business.
of around €584 billion between now and 2030, with This technology allows the distribution of advanced
about €170 billion focused on digitalization measures computing capabilities onto different nodes of
including smart IoT devices and meters, 5G and 6G the grid – in this case, secondary substations.
connectivity, and a pan-European energy data space
powered by cloud-edge computing services. It represents a significant step in the digitalization
of the distribution grid and the ability to meet
With a third of European grids being over 40 years the new requirements of customers – integrating
old, the addition of this layer of digital technologies new distributed resources, and supporting the
is absolutely vital in preparing them for the distributed increasing electrification of the economy.
and intermittent generation from renewable sources,
the increasing demand, and for ensuring energy
Read the full story here
efficiency at all levels.
 13

Modernize, while securing

critical infrastructure

The opportunity between core and edge, or in use. Organizations

therefore need the ability to monitor all those
environments in real-time, which can be a big
challenge across vast networks of IoT systems and
devices that leverage connectivity such as 5G.

As energy and utility companies connect more of their Many energy and utility organizations still run legacy
critical infrastructure with edge and IoT technologies, technology, and suffer from vulnerabilities in the gaps
the potential for groundbreaking innovation increases, between their IT and OT systems. Different security
but so does the threat of cyberattack. solutions have often been bolted onto individual
apps, creating silos that prevent the sharing of
Providers of critical national infrastructure are being critical knowledge.
increasingly targeted by cyber criminals, and yet almost
four in every five critical-infrastructure organizations But, as many businesses have already realized, both
do not adopt zero-trust security strategies, with the reducing complexity and increasing insight are crucial:
average cost of a breach rising to $5.4 million in 2022. simplification is key to improving your security posture.
Moving to a single-platform, zero-trust approach
Energy and utility organizations have an imperative across IT and OT will give energy and utility companies
to protect their data, whether that data is at rest the means to secure their entire enterprise – assets,
(for example, in the cloud or data center), in transit devices, and data – from edge to cloud.
 14

Power sustainable growth VMware and Intel transform security by providing VMware Carbon Black cloud-based protection Intel ® AES-NI is an encryption standard used across
comprehensive measures in both software and technology analyzes endpoint activity, identifies software ecosystems to protect network traffic,
with VMware and Intel hardware, across application infrastructure and threats, and automates your response to block personal data, and corporate IT/OT infrastructures.
endpoints. It is an approach that maximizes visibility, cyberattacks in real time.
context, and control, and secures the interactions Intel ® Secure Key (DRNG) is an innovative hardware
between users, applications, and data. VMware SASE Platform™ provides secure, approach to high-quality, high-performance entropy
reliable, and optimized access to traditional and and random-number generation.
Intrinsic security from VMware, for example, uses new applications for mobile clients, branches,
threat intelligence and infrastructure to protect apps and campuses with a single, holistic solution. Such a strategy reduces exposure to cyberattack
and data across endpoints, workloads, networks, via a zero-trust system based on full visibility and
workspaces, and clouds while providing IT/OT VMware SD-WAN is a software-defined WAN control. This is how you can proactively manage
with visibility and control over policies that protect overlay that ensures high-quality application cyber risk, strengthen the security of your and your
the business. performance and availability for end-users customers’ data, apps, and devices, and achieve
while lowering networking costs. full regulatory compliance.
 15

Case studies
vPAC Alliance: Publiacqua: a secure SOCAR:
driving substation flow of IT services in strengthening
digitalization the cloud its agile structure

VMware and Intel have teamed up with industry leaders Publiacqua has created a disaster recovery service SOCAR Turkey partnered with VMware to gain
to drive open, interoperable, and secure software- using VMware Cloud on AWS, building a platform full visibility of its network and manage three data
defined architecture to host protection, automation, not previously available through more traditional centers with a disaster recovery strategy from a single
and control solutions for power-system substations. technologies while also delivering security, location without any data loss. With a more agile
reliability, and system integration. structure, it can now use software-based firewalls,
Together with companies like ABB, Dell Technologies, routing, and switching technologies as needed.
and Edison International, our mission is to develop a
standard, flexible, and manageable platform for the “The possibility of integrating
next-generation smart grid. VMware Cloud on AWS allowed “VMware NSX is the right
us to tackle the project with tools platform and solution for us.
and technologies we knew.” It provides great flexibility
Mauro Caccifani, Architecture, Risk and Security
and competence in IT continuity.”
Manager, at Publiacqua Akin Börekçi, IT Infrastructure and Service
Management Group Coordinator, SOCAR Turkey

Read more Read more Read more

 16

Create The opportunity

outstanding
services with In a disrupted world, customers are seeking ever more
choice, control, and visibility over their energy usage

modern apps
and costs. Energy and utility organizations that are able
to seamlessly provide more personalized customer
services and experiences have the opportunity to
elevate their brand reputation.

The ability to rapidly develop and launch intuitive

and engaging modern apps is therefore growing
in significance as a competitive differentiator
between businesses.

But legacy technology infrastructure and outdated

apps – or internal operational software – are limiting
the ability of many companies to bring new cloud-
native apps and features to market at speed, leading
to missed opportunities.

A lack of in-house skills in the required fields of software

and app development can exacerbate this problem.
But there is now a chance to leverage the support of
experienced technology partners to overcome these
challenges and gain a competitive edge through
enhanced customer offerings.
 17

Power sustainable growth

with VMware and Intel

VMware and Intel are dedicated to helping our

energy and utility customers unlock their full potential
via a transformative multi-cloud strategy: enabling
the seamless delivery of new services and apps to
customers, and supporting secure data-exchange.

VMware offers world-class expertise to help you

implement and scale a production app platform
that delivers enduring value for your business, as
well as a great developer experience, by leveraging
our Tanzu® Application Platform and Tanzu®
Labs services. Our capabilities will enable energy
and utility organizations to:

Take an agile approach to operations. Adopting

lean methodologies will enable companies to get
new services to customers faster – with the ability to
scale up quickly during periods of increased demand.

Increase innovation. By freeing resources that would

have previously been deployed to maintain outdated
systems, energy and utility businesses can focus on
the people, processes, and technology needed to
take innovation to the next level.
 18

Your
VMware and Intel solutions have been built to work In this way we’ll help you innovate and deliver trusted and
alongside one another. No matter where you are on reliable energy and utility services to customers, fueling a
your digital transformation journey, we can assist you: more secure and sustainable future for everyone.

partnership
from building up your infrastructure to helping you
assess your application portfolio; prioritizing migration
or transformation plans; and providing expert resources

for success to accelerate the progress you are making.

Integrating VMware into your tech stack does not

Let’s talk
Get in touch to arrange a call:
mean having to start from scratch. Our systems
integrate smoothly with many public-cloud
VMware
providers and deliver seamless platform capability
Alexandra Baleta, PhD
to enable software-defined operations.
Senior Director Industry EMEA
Together with Intel, VMware empowers IT/OT abaleta@vmware.com
organizations at energy and utility organizations
to realize a digital transformation and deliver IT
Intel
infrastructure and application services with speed
and agility – supporting business growth while Ionut Deaconeasa
optimizing TCO and improving resource utilization. Senior Solutions Architect
ionut.deaconeasa@intel.com