Toronto Hydro OMS Upgrade and 24x7 Support (CROMS)

In the summer of 2002, Toronto Hydro conducted an upgrade of their existing district outage management system. The OMS had been in production 24x7 for nine years and the hardware was nearing the end of its lifespan. As part of the upgrade the system was renamed 'Customer Response Outage Management System' (CROMS).

This upgrade was a substantial system overhaul but it was primarily intended to upgrade the system without adding or removing functionality. The server hardware was replaced while the software was upgraded to a more robust, reliable version. Some data porting was needed, the interfaces to existing corporate systems needed to be adjusted, and the user's environments needed to be adjusted from UNIX-based workstations to to a PC-based X-Window emulation (change to the client/server architecture).

The Role of ExtenSys

ExtenSys was invited to participate in the OMS upgrade project. As part of the upgrade team, several ExtenSys members offered project management support and participated in the hardware and software implementation. Specifically, members of ExtenSys participated in:

• project management support, including:
• developing a migration strategy,
• coordinating resources,
• performing a GAP analysis,
• writing and executing a test plan.
• hardware specification and design.
• hardware implementation and connectivity.
• system administration and configuration.
• database design and schema updates.
• software installation, configuration and customization.
• system interface review and updating.
• tool suite / application review and updating.
• network model builds.
• integration testing.
• documenting system changes and developing the support documentation.
• training users and support staff on the new system

To date, ExtenSys is still under contract to Toronto Hydro and provides first line 24x7 support for CROMS.