Utility Solutions Provider – Custom Software Development

Utility Solutions Provider - Custom Software Dev

Utility Solutions Provider – Custom Software Development

Utility Solutions Provider - Custom Software Dev
Last Updated: February 20, 20242.6 min readCategories: Utility & Energy

Leading Utility Solutions Provider Selects QAT Global for Custom Software Development

Cost Savings, Speed, and Quality with Brazil Offshoring

Customer Snapshot

  • Utility Solutions Provider
  • International Locations

Solution Snapshot

  • Original solution developed in 9 months with 6-man team
  • Long term relationship with multiple releases to production over many years
  • Brazilian resources used for development and testing
  • Almost entirely built using open-source solutions and libraries
  • Performs in a stand-alone or clustered solution

Key Differentiators

  • Brazilian Offshore capability
  • Multi-location team
  • Agility RPM
  • Scrum Methodology and Project Management
  • Established Java Coding Standards, Tools, Architecture, Training, Best Practices and Processes
  • Small consulting company focused on the success of the customer

Skills Needed:

  • Active MQ for JMS
  • Ajax
  • CSS3
  • Eclipse
  • GIT
  • HTML/CSS
  • HTML4
  • HTML5
  • Java
  • JavaScript
  • JQuery
  • Maven
  • MyBatis
  • Postgres database
  • RedHat Enterprise (Clustered)
  • Spring
  • Spring MVC
  • Spring Security
  • Spring WS
  • SVN
  • Tomcat (Clustered)

The client’s company helps utilities and consumers make the most of finite water and energy resources. They deliver advanced measurement, data collection, analysis, and control products and solutions that help their customers improve operational efficiency while reducing their environmental impact.

The client needed a solution to enable utilities to manage lighting devices, specifically street lights. This solution would involve interfacing with the lighting device and managing and monitoring its operations. Everything from simply turning the lighting device on and off from detecting errors and alarms and notifying end-users. As a result, the utility provider is able to monitor and manage all lighting devices as well as save considerable resources as a result of being able to proactively monitor all devices and perform a wide variety of data analytics. To develop the solution, the company looked to a new partner QAT Global.

QAT Global’s Approach

The key challenge facing the development team was that this was a new software development project to manage devices that did not even exist, they were “in development.” As a result, requirements and API specifications were difficult to come by and often changed. In addition, over time, the low-level communications engine evolved, which in turn impacted the solution. An Agile development methodology was used, and as a result, subsequent sprints were adjusted as requirements became available and/or changed.
QAT Global assisted the customer in the requirements gathering and documentation process. Then QAT Global implemented the solution using SCRUM. The development team consisted of both American and Brazilian resources. Daily SCRUM meetings were conducted where project statuses were reviewed. Various demos were held during each sprint to ensure the customer was getting exactly what they wanted and adjustments were made based on these reviews. The end result was a solution which:

  • Leverages open-source technologies
  • Is highly cost-effective as a result of QAT Global resources and solutions
  • Uses Commodity Resourcing, Knowledge, and Technology
  • Is a completely internationalized Web – Rich Internet Application (RIA)
  • The solution can be hosted or customer installed

As a result of this project, the client added additional projects for QAT Global to develop and maintain long term. To date, QAT Global has worked on over 8 projects for this client spanning a multi-year relationship.

Download the Utility Solutions Provide Custom Software Development Case Study

Download the Case Study