Energy Market Company

iZeno co-architects technology modernisation at EMC

About the customer

Energy Market Company Pte Ltd (EMC) operates Singapore’s wholesale electricity market – Asia’s first liberalised electricity market. The National Electricity Market of Singapore (NEMS) opened for trading on 1 January 2003.

EMC completes the connection between those who make electricity in Singapore and those who use it. All of Singapore’s electricity is bought and sold through the company. EMC is like the stock exchange for electricity, providing the IT systems, the trading environment and the governance for the market.

The Challenge

Lau Chee Kiong, Senior Vice President, Technology at EMC, said that the company had begun an IT Transformation initiative to replace the ageing hardware and operating systems, to meet market requirements. Referred to as the NEMSCAP system project, legacy systems were being replaced to ensure that the systems and technology were well supported.

“We were in the process of modernising our core applications so that they stay relevant, up-to-date and meet regulatory compliance. We selected iZeno as our technology partner to co-architect a modernised, cloud-native architecture on account of their experience and technical capabilities, exemplary customer support and thorough understanding of our business requirements”

Lau Chee Kiong
Senior Vice President, Technology EMC

With IT operations running round-the-clock for trade processing and publication of information to the market participants and general public, EMC sought a partner who could help accelerate their digital transformation project.

Implementing the Solution

EMC wanted to expand their IT transformation so that their customers can access best-of-breed integrations offered by enterprise open-sourced solutions and cloud-native technology.

They needed to overcome the challenge of having a proprietary development framework and limited technology innovations.

“Our team of experts presented innovative recommendations that would be beneficial to EMC. Our technical proficiency and hands-on, in-the-trenches experience set us apart. These cutting-edge and future-enabling proposals were selected as the way forward”, said Jason Lin, Managing Director of the iZeno group of companies.

The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of the current NEMSCAP systems needed to be considered. Another area of focus was capacity scaling, allowing for market growth and also building capabilities to scale the NEMSCAP system upwards and outwards with ease.

EMC was looking to improve flexibility, efficiency and speed in its provisioning and deployment management processes as the company transitioned to multiple environments. Disaster recovery site availability and disaster recovery complexity strategies were tough with existing systems. “iZeno enhanced and expanded EMC’s automation and integration with frameworks such as Node.js, Jenkins and Apache Maven, strengthening continuous integration and continuous deployment capabilities”, added Jason.

Considering their superior technical capabilities, EMC opted for Redhat EAP or enterprise application platform, FUSE transformation, PAM or privilege access management, SSO or single sign-on and Tricentis Tosca from iZeno. “iZeno presented a comprehensive proposal that met all technical requirements at EMC. We distinguished ourselves by considering challenges from the customer’s perspective while build- ing the solution framework. By doing this, we ensured that the customer’s interest and investment were protected”, reiterated Jason.

Lau commenced an IT transformation initiative at EMC to do away with legacy hardware and operating systems to meet SLA stipulations laid down by the market regulator.

“As the NEMS IT operations are online 24x7, it is imperative that we select a capable technology partner who could modernise our existing solutions and help us achieve business agility”, he said.

The Result

Solutions from iZeno were deployed seamlessly as the team went through the steps of virtual hardware provisioning, development, SAT or site acceptance testing, SIT or systems integration testing, UAT or user acceptance testing, parallel run, training, and go live. The iZeno rollout facilitated the TCO reduction of the current NEMSCAP systems and enabled sufficient capacity scaling of the same, both upwards and outwards.

“With the new solution, EMC has improved the flexibility, efficiency and speed in provisioning UAT environments via virtualisation. We also gained deployment management capabilities to multiple environments and saw a marked improvement in disaster recovery site availability and reduction in disaster recovery complexity”

Lau Chee Kiong
Senior Vice President, Technology EMC

iZeno provided a solution that met EMC’s refresh project’s technical requirements and strategic objectives. The team proposed and provided selected application modernisations in a professional, competent and committed manner, ensuring all assurances were delivered on target and in a timely fashion. The final ‘go-live’ encountered no major incidents and was largely transparent to EMC’s customers. The cut-over completion was well ahead of schedule and well executed by both the iZeno and EMC teams.

By selecting iZeno's open-source enterprise and cloud-native solutions, EMC gained a significant reduc- tion in TCO. In addition, EMC now has a sound future-proofing proposal for refresh options that will provide them flexibility, efficiency, maintenance, continuous modernisation of critical applications and constant upgradation of skill sets and knowledge of their technology team.

The Road Ahead

“This is our first collaboration with iZeno, and we look forward to building on this great relationship in the coming years. The team demonstrated tremendous technical expertise and have put in place innovative solutions that keep pace with industry best practices and trends”, said Lau, before adding, “We appreciate iZeno’s focused project management, structured delivery and constant support”.

iZeno showcased adaptability and flexibility, especially during the pandemic, with solutions that mitigated resource crunch and enabled collaboration to meet all deliverables. The leadership at iZeno provided oversight and prompt support during crisis management. Lau recalls an instance during the Myanmar crisis when the majority of the testing team was operating remotely, iZeno rendered assistance to the working team to resolve any roadblocks faced.
 

“EMC will definitely invite iZeno to participate in future projects as technology refreshes, and modernisation of EMC’s IT systems is a constant evolution.”

Lau Chee Kiong
Senior Vice President, Technology EMC