Application and Infrastructure Challenges for Utility Companies

Application & Infrastructure monitoring is crucial for Utility and Energy companies to ensure reliable and efficient operation of their critical infrastructure. However, these companies face several challenges in infrastructure monitoring, including:

• Geographically dispersed infrastructure: : Utility companies often have geographically dispersed infrastructure, including water treatment facilities, power plants, substations, and distribution networks spread across vast areas. Observability can be challenging, as it will need remote analysis and data collection methods to provide real-time insights into application and infrastructure performance.
• Scale and complexity: Infrastructure in these environments can be large and complex, with multiple hosts, VMs, virtual networks and cloud-based resources. Also, the amount of application data from various sources, such as sensors, SCADA systems, and other monitoring devices is humongous. Also, mapping applications like GIS have their own set of unique problems. Thus, there is a need for Observability solutions, that are capable of handling, storing and analyzing large volume of data. With Uila uObserve, you have an Observability solution with a highly scalable architecture that can operate and handle these type of environments, while at the same time classifying applications that are commonly seen like industrial protocols, IoT, etc. And all of this monitoring is done without the installation of any agents for the virtual infrastructure, which makes it efficient for the IT teams to enable observability without any special approvals from application owners or complex instrumentation of specialized applications.
• Compliance and regulatory requirements: Utility companies need to comply to multiple compliance and regulatory requirements for safety, environmental standards, and cybersecurity. FERC, NERC, PCI and SOC are some of the commonly used regulations. Ensuring compliance to these standards is complex and challenging most of the times.
• Cybersecurity Threats: The infrastructure maybe vulnerable to cybersecurity threats, including cyber attacks, ransomware and malicious activities from local as well as foreign entities. This requires advanced security observability tools that can detect and mitigate potential cyber threats in real-time. With Uila uObserve, you get alerted to and are automatically protected from 1000s of cyber threats, data exfiltration attempts and any application anomalous behavior (including introduction of new malware-based assets and changes in dependencies).




• Hybrid IT environments: Organizations may use a mix of on-premises and cloud-based infrastructure and multiple vendors. Monitoring these type of environments needs solutions, that can easily visualize application workloads across cloud boundaries. Uila uObserve provides full-stack visibility for any mission-critical application that is spanning those cloud boundaries.




• Operational Continuity: It is critical to ensure continuous operation of the infrastructure, to meet demands of customers and ensure top service reliability. This is critical, as any disruptions to the mission critical applications have a significant impact on the revenue and reputation of the organization, as this may affect the lives of millions of customers. Observability for this operational continuity, including identifying and addressing potential failures or performance issues in real-time, can be challenging, as it requires efficient troubleshooting tools and proactive maintenance practices.

In conclusion, overcoming these challenges requires advanced observability, compliance adherence, cybersecurity measures, and proactive maintenance practices to ensure reliable and efficient operation of utility infrastructure.

You can try out a 21-day trial of Uila’s full-stack observability solution, uObserve, in your environment and see how you can get access to unmatched observability for your environment.