Electricity Today T&D Magazine

Moving mobile technology to the job site

BY SCOTT BALL, Motion Computing

The world looks very different from the top of a utility pole, or from a manhole on an underground power junction. As electric utilities expand the deployment of technology to their field workers, it is becoming more critical that information technology (IT) departments be able to observe their environment from the worker’s vantage point.

Years ago, IT departments worked with a precursory understanding of the field. The first wave of mobile utility apps was centered on dispatch and work order processing: functions that were typically handled sitting in a truck with a laptop. The applications were often adaptations of desktop versions, and from an IT standpoint, the devices did not appear that different from a remote desktop.