Sparx Systems and UCAIug Collaborate on Standards for Electric Utilities
Partnership to Benefit Global Electricity Sector
CRESWICK, Australia, Sept. 16, 2020 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Sparx Systems is pleased to announce a renewed agreement with the CIM User Group to support rapid change within the global utility sector, driven by Distributed Energy Renewables (DER) and help meet the challenges to standards development posed by COVID-19.
Through an enduring and productive 14 year relationship that has benefited both organizations, Sparx Systems has supported the 61850 and CIM User Group (CIMug) in the development of IEC 61850 and the Common Information Model models to support key industry standards within the IEC TC57. These industry models have been developed and are continually maintained in Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect.
The collaboration has been driven by a number of factors, such as the global impact of COVID-19 on the standards development process and industry changes over the past decade, such as the exponential evolution of the renewable energy market. Renewable energy now accounts for a third of the global power capacity and this transformation is having a direct impact on the future capacity of the grid.
Ken Harkin, Head of Strategic Relations at Sparx Systems stated, "The face to face meetings that have been the tradition of the standards development communities has been deeply impacted by the effects wrought by COVID-19. However, Enterprise Architect Pro Cloud Server now facilitates 'collaboration in the model' for industry stakeholders and subject matter experts, which enables effective meetings to continue virtually, eliminating the expense of travel while providing convenience and increased contact opportunities."
Improved standards and ongoing research and development for hardware and software advances in power, communications, and information technologies are essential to successful evolution of the future grid.
"The mission of the 61850 and CIM User Groups to support, promote and encourage the use of the standards and standards development activities has been greatly enhanced by the partnership with Sparx Systems," remarked Margaret Goodrich, President of UCAIug. "Our unique position provides the perfect framework to provide the much needed tools to continue the development of the models supporting the standards development. With this new collaboration, we will be able to provide the Pro Cloud Server to enhance the user collaboration activities and continue the standards development in our new and more virtual world."
Dr. Stuart Laval, Co-chairman of the Open Field Message Bus (OpenFMB) task forces at the UCA International Users Group (UCAIug) and North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB), remarked, "Similar to the 61850 and CIM User Groups, UCAIug's recently established Open Field Message Bus (OpenFMB) Users Group can also benefit a lot from this cloud collaboration environment. This enhanced tool feature has the potential to greatly improve the data modeling governance process in our use-case working group that is actively defining, extending, and validating new OpenFMB platform independent model artifacts being implemented in Unified Modeling Language (UML)."
In an effort to increase the number of individuals and organizations contributing to the standards development effort, a CIMug has been established in the Oceania region and will be led by Australia and New Zealand. This is the regional chapter of the CIMug established outside of the US and the EU.
This collaboration agreement presents many benefits, both short and long term, for all our global industry stakeholders and most immediately for those prospective Members in the Oceania region who will be able to directly contribute to the standards development effort.
About Sparx Systems
Sparx Systems is a global software company specializing in high performance, visual modeling platforms for planning, designing and constructing software-intensive systems. Sparx platforms are used by systems designers, corporate planners, business analysts, enterprise architects, standards develop-ers and software engineers. Sparx modeling software is widely used in finance, defense, government, aerospace, automotive engineering, geospatial, entertainment, health, smart grid, aviation, retail and telecommunications.
Sparx Systems' flagship modeling platform, Enterprise Architect, provides robust support for team-wide collaboration, and can scale up from single-user deployment to teams with hundreds of local and remote collaborators. With more than 850,000+ effective users globally and 80% of Fortune 100 firms owning licenses, Enterprise Architect is an essential platform for the most complex of projects.
Recipient of multiple industry awards, Sparx Systems is highly regarded in the industry for the delivery of scalable, robust and affordable digital transformation software solutions. Sparx software is price competitive even when deployed across the entire development team. First developed in 1998, the Sparx Systems' Enterprise Architect modeling platform was commercially released in 2000, and has enjoyed more than 20 years of continuous development and growth.
For more information, please visit the company website: http://www.sparxsystems.com.
About UCAiug
The UCA® International Users Group (UCAIug) is a not-for-profit corporation consisting of utility user and supplier companies that is dedicated to promoting the integration and interoperability of electric/gas/water utility systems through the use of international standards-based technology. It is a User Group for IEC 61850, the Common Information Model (CIM per IEC 61970, IEC 61968 and IEC 62325) and the Open Field Message Bus (OpenFMB per NAESB standards).
The focus of UCAIug is to assist users and vendors in the deployment of standards for real-time applications in the electric utility industry. The Users Group does not write standards. However, where appropriate, the User Group works closely with those standards bodies that have primary responsibility for the completion of standards (notably IEC TC 57: Power Systems Management and Associated Information Exchange). For more information, please visit http://www.ucaiug.org.
About OpenFMB
The Open Field Message Bus (OpenFMB) interoperability framework is a standard ratified in 2016 by North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB), a leading energy industry Standards Development Organization (SDO) accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).
The OpenFMB User Group's role is to accelerate adoption of NAESB's OpenFMB framework standard by organizing outreach activities to share lessons learned and potential applications (or use-cases) when implementing the OpenFMB framework in a practical operational environment. Additionally, the OpenFMB users group will coordinate with UCAIug's ITCA branch to ensure that the test plan, being validated by the Accredited Test Lab(s), conforms to the model business practices specified in NAESB's OpenFMB standard.
SOURCE Sparx Systems
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