Cloudy days are coming and we’re well prepared!

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How to overcome challenges of embracing cloud technology?

Cloud technology is becoming more and more mainstream, yet in the utility world – especially among utilities that operate electrical grids – it’s still being observed with an extreme caution.

Why are utilities so reluctant to migrate their systems to cloud?

By carefully listening to our existing customers, Microsoft Azure experts and the global market in the utility segment, we at Schneider Electric dived deep into the most common concerns utilities have when considering investing in cloud solutions. It is our mission to reassure them by showing the way of addressing the challenges and encourage them to embrace cloud solutions as the next step on their digitalization journey.

So, what are the challenges utilities face and how to address them?

Cybersecurity is one of the hot topics today. Everything, and everyone is now going digital, and like gravity, this attracts cyber-criminals. In Schneider Electric, we have embraced the layered approach to security, where each layer strengthens the security posture of our solution. Even though Microsoft provides strong physical protection, the physical security is only a healthy basis for secure systems. Without secure solution architecture, physical security alone doesn’t really provide protection against malicious actors. That’s why Microsoft Azure platform introduces the concept of policies acting as true guardrails around the entire cloud environment.

What about the data residency? And its privacy? As cloud computing has matured and made its way up to enterprise sector it brought to focus the most common concern of all: managing data residency. However, various rigid regulations governing physical locations for data storing and ways it is transferred, processed, or accessed internationally leave very little room for concerns. The same goes for data sovereignty: the data is subject to the laws and regulations of the country in which it is physically collected, held, or processed and with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation in place, it's being taken with much more caution.

Finally, one of the most obvious characteristics of cloud solutions is their hosting outside of a utility’s data centers, basically – on a publicly available cloud. So, if operators in control centers wish to use their cloud-hosted solution, they usually must go through public internet to reach it. Understandably, that evokes concerns about the availability and usability of the system. However, with Microsoft Azure’s “cold potato” routing algorithm the traffic can be regulated to ensure the time spent on public internet is minimized.

Why choose Schneider Electric?

In Schneider Electric, we believe that cloud solutions are a key to preparing utilities for operating the grids of the future. Shared vision and combined efforts of Schneider Electric and Microsoft over the past 2 years made it possible to provide a reliable and cyber-secure cloud-hosted grid applications for mission-critical systems. Together with Microsoft Azure experts, we are building a platform for the future.

A paper explaining how are we addressing those common challenges and why we chose Microsoft as a partner coming out soon. Stay tuned!

[S-W · Accepted solution]

Thank you for sharing the knowledge @Ana_Boban 
We're sure our curious community look forward to learn more electrical distribution and software know-how!