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The Nov. 12 edition of Business Green includes the following interview with Oracle Utilities' Rodger Smith. The article discusses how Smith ended up in his current position, his personal interest in sustainable development, green technologies that will revolutionize the global economy and more.

Results of an Oracle Utilities survey released this morning show that electric utilities in Canada and the US are only in the early stages of putting smart meter data good use. But they could be doing a better job of using the data they are collecting. The survey was of 151 utility executives in Canada and the United States. The study, Utility Transformations - Big Data, Bigger Opportunities: Plans and Preparedness for the Data Deluge, shows that utilities on both sides of the 49th Parallel are collecting significantly more interval data from smart meters. The frequency at which they are gathering smart meter data is 180 times more than in the past - every four hours compared to once a month. And the vast majority of them are collecting information such as outage and voltage data. Linda Jackman, group VP of industry strategy for Oracle Utilities, tells Canadian Green Tech in an interview that despite the improvement on the data collection front, utilities aren't using the data as effective as they could be. She was surprised to find utilities collecting certain types of data, but then not using that data to inform business decisions. According to the results, 78% of utilities surveyed are collecting outage data with 59% of them using, meaning nearly 20% aren't correlating outage data with customer communications as an example. For voltage data, the levels are 73% and 57%, respectively. "In outage and voltage data, the fact that everybody is not collecting that data, I think is surprising. You've rolled out a smart meter and you're not collecting outage data when it has the ability to talk to you around outage data? Why am I not collecting it? But then only 60% of them are using it once they have collected it, I think is also surprising," says Jackman. "So what we're seeing is that utilities are still in this very early stage and very formative stage of collecting the data but actually don't know what [they're] going to do with

Oracle will provide merchandise financial planning, assortment planning, size profiling and optimization systems. It's a full suite of retail business applications so that supply chains are managed better, inventory control gets tighter, core merchandising is improved and so Arcadia can track sales and fashion trends better and learn more about what sizes are needed in the stores, on an individual basis, rather than by country. According to Green, Oracle will enable Arcadia to "romance the customer" and intensify efforts to put up flagships and grow the online business.

Oracle will provide merchandise financial planning, assortment planning, size profiling and optimization systems. It's a full suite of retail business applications so that supply chains are managed better, inventory control gets tighter, core merchandising is improved and so Arcadia can track sales and fashion trends better and learn more about what sizes are needed in the stores, on an individual basis, rather than by country. According to Green, Oracle will enable Arcadia to "romance the customer" and intensify efforts to put up flagships and grow the online business.

Highlighting University of Western Ontario's selection of Oracle's Primavera Enterprise Project Portfolio Management and Oracle's AutoVue to support major campus engineering and contruction portfolio. The release notes that the university will be able to support its aggressive sustainability and green initiative directives. The release includes comment by Paul Martin, director of business operations, facilities management at the University of Western Ontario, noting that the university is looking for ways to do things better and improve the student experience. The release also includes comment by George Qubty, director of facilities engineering, facilities management, noting that Oracle solutions give the college the kind of state-of-the-art learning facilities that can meet both the academic and environmental challenges of the twenty-first century.

Highlighting a recent Oracle survey revealing Canadian and American utility executives' outlook on smart grid benefits and opportunities for businesses in the next 10 years including comments from Brad Williams, vice president for product management, Orac