Empowering our Clients through the Cloud

Good companies strive to do things better, but truly innovative companies ask why they do certain things and find answers to redefine the way they work.

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­Genesis – the electricity generator and retailer of electricity and gas to 680,000 Kiwi homes – is putting the power of self-analysis to good work.

Sizing up opportunities beyond its historical sweet-spot of energy provision, Genesis is recasting itself as an energy management company.

Its bold repositioning has spawned a digital-centric brand, called Energy Online, and new products and services designed to give customers more control over their energy consumption.

But getting to this position involved the large-scale migration of Genesis’ IT to CCL’s Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platform. The move to infrastructure services was part of a broader partnership involving IT managed services, business mobile, and cloud services spearheaded by CCL parent Spark.

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“Moving to the cloud is about focusing on our strengths and empowering our customers.”

- Andrea Black, Group Manager – Platforms & Digital Operations, Genesis Energy

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Genesis’ journey to the cloud sprung from the frustration of owning and managing IT. Ageing infrastructure was unstable, costly to upkeep, and isolated the company from new technology critical to its digital by default vision.

At the same time, Genesis was wary of nascent digital-first players making waves with their digital-led customer experience. Wary of the potential disruption, Genesis set its sights on redefining customer experience.

“We had to decouple our infrastructure to establish a modular IT operating environment – so we could target our investment and bolt on digital solutions to launch new products and services. To do cool new things you can’t be constrained by old systems.”

- Andrea Black,Group Manager – Platforms and Digital, at Genesis.

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CCL’s IaaS platform provided answers, effectively replacing a hotchpotch of servers and operating systems once described as “spaghetti”.

The move dramatically simplified Genesis’ entire IT environment, with CCL’s IBM Power as a Service AIX platform providing the foundations to modernise Genesis’ customer management application, Gentrack, and Oracle database applications.

Cloud platform modularity ensures Genesis can build, park, and share complex multi-VM environments. They can start small and scale up when the time’s right, reduce development times, and integrate new applications and services without disrupting operations.

Above the hypervisor, Spark takes care of IT service management, including operating systems monitoring, change controls, patches, and upgrades.

“Genesis has fundamentally changed its IT cost structure and footprints,” said Black. “Our IT infrastructure is modular and scalable, providing the foundation for customer-led innovation. It means we can leverage our investment in infrastructure today rather than having to build our own capacity and unlock the benefits down the track.”

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IaaS at Genesis

Working in the cloud, Genesis targets IT investment at the right level, lowering costs and growing new capabilities in a modular fashion.

Accelerated delivery: Cloud services and platform automation ensure Genesis operates at the speed of business – not IT

Targeted IT investment: With utility capacity and IT platforms refashioned as cloud services, Genesis regulates IT capacity to suit the pace and progress of projects and seasons. It also targets expenditure at testing, development and innovation – the stuff that directly impacts customer experience.

Latest tech, now: Genesis plugs in to CCL’s advanced tools, platforms, and enterprise-grade technologies – all tested, approved, and updated automatically. At the frontend, CCL’s CloudCreator provides dashboard controls to dial up capacity for new projects and scale things back in quiet times. Everything is ready to go and primed to work in a bigger eco-system of technology.

From CAPEX to OPEX: Genesis has effectively removed IT assets from its balance sheet.