October 26, 2009

Zementis gives the

smart grid ‘intelligence'

A San Diego software firm is teaming with engineering giant Scientific Applications International (SAIC) to offer software claimed to automatically make complex decisions about the power grid.  Zementis is a privately held firm with 14 employees and said it entered a non-exclusive deal of undisclosed value with SAIC to help the Fortune 500 firm provide predictive-analytics software to electric utilities.

          “Our product, Adapa, takes information derived from databases and makes decisions based on it,” Zementis sales head Ronald Ramos told us Friday.  “It just does it.  There's no human intervention.”

Zementis believes its expertise combined with SAIC's deep domain knowledge in the energy sector will help utility providers to be more efficient and agile in addressing all the challenges they face when moving to a truly smart grid.

          Ramos described an example of how predictive analytics is used.  A gasoline retailer could detect that a customer using a certain credit card usually buys 91-octane gas between 9 pm and 11 pm on weekdays.  The use of that card to buy 87-octane on a weekend morning could trigger the command to automatically reject and seize the card as stolen.

          Utilities could put it to work detecting anomalies, he added.

          The Zementis software is used by various industries including retailing, banking, mortgage firms and insurance.  Predictive analytics is a branch of artificial intelligence, the much-hyped computer technology of the ‘90s that seeks to simulate thinking.  It builds statistical models that can learn to detect patterns hidden in vast amounts of data.  When it sees patterns, or variations from patterns, it can take pre-programmed actions.

          Predictive analytics is distinct from a related technology, model development, that also detects patterns in data but doesn't automatically take action based on those patterns, Ramos explained.

The deal is “very complementary to our efforts,” noted Ramos, who declined to identify a firm value on the deal.  “As a premier engineering company, SAIC will reach customers with our product that we would not likely have access to.”

          Zementis said Adapa works on Amazon Cloud, an array of internet-accessible servers for computing and data storage, thus it can be used from anywhere.  So-called cloud computing, also offered by Google and Microsoft, gives organizations access to massive computing power and data storage for a fraction of the cost they would pay to own such computers. 

Adapa can be used on an organization's own servers, too, Zementis said.

          SAIC has 45,000 employees and 2008 revenue of $10.1 billion/.  The firm could not be reached for comment Friday.