Energy & Utilities:<BR>Information Powers Energy BusinessEnergy & Utilities:<BR>Information Powers Energy Business

The top IT project at electric utility Entergy Corp. is a technology-portfolio management system that's designed to help the company understand "value management," or how its technology assets affect business processes, says CIO Ray Johnson. The system should be in place by year's end. "I want all new technologies to have strong ties to business processes," he says.

Improving business processes has been the main IT task for many energy and utility companies this year as they wait to see what happens on the marketing and trading sides of their industry in the wake of the Enron scandal. Many companies decided that the safest approach was to stay away from that business for a while, at least until the investigations and prosecutions have ended. Others, such as Duke and Dynegy, still see opportunity.

Slim profit margins can make trading energy a risky proposition, unless a company controls the assets it's trading. "I wouldn't want to be in energy trading," Meta's Nicholson says. In the meantime, he adds, most companies will devote themselves to the more conventional parts off the business. Says Nicholson, "An emphasis on profitable assets and risk management is the way energy trading will go from now on."