Bharat Light and Power and IBM Collaborate to Drive Business Growth and Build Smarter Operations

BANGALORE, India, Nov. 19, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Bharat Light and Power (BLP), a leading renewable energy producer in India, has formed a strategic engagement with IBM (NYSE: IBM) to drive business growth, enhance revenue and increase operational efficiency. In this 10-year collaboration, BLP will use IBM's SoftLayer cloud capabilities, built on open standards, as well as IBM analytics and mobile solutions to increase its power generation capacity. 

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According to industry estimates, approximately 400 million people in India do not have access to electricity. At the same time, India's energy infrastructure is highly strained, with an ever increasing demand for energy. To sustain its growth trajectory, India needs to meet its energy demands in an environmentally sustainable manner.

"The Indian power sector has doubled its capacity in the last 10 years and is projected to add another 100GW in next five years. With the issues facing fossil-based fuels, a good share of this growth will come from renewable energy sources. The scope of investments for renewables is estimated to be $10-12 billion in next five years making it ripe for global investments in India," said Mr. Tejpreet S Chopra, president & CEO of BLP.

BLP is one of the largest clean energy generation companies in India.  It aims to address the sustainable energy challenge by increasing its renewable energy generation capacity to one giga watt (GW) over the next few years. The company focuses on wind, solar, biomass and hydro technologies for power generation and is exploring other advanced technologies such as energy storage, and smart grid to better integrate renewable energy to the grid.  BLP also uses its years of expertise in building, owning and operating power plants around the globe to offer pre-development and post commissioning services to wind farm developers, operators, owners, investors and lenders.

The integration of disparate systems across the enterprise is critical so all users have access to one version of the truth and a fuller view of the most comprehensive data, regardless of their department or role. Cloud computing provides the fastest, most efficient delivery of IT resources for integration without the need for extensive start-up or capital budgeting.

IBM will work with BLP to help the company manage, and effectively use the vast amount of data generated by the power generation sources. With efficient and predictive analysis of data, energy producers can better manage their resources, take necessary precautionary measures, and improve overall productivity. IBM will deploy its SoftLayer cloud infrastructure as a service to centrally monitor and manage BLP's existing and future generation plants as well as store and manage the data on cloud.

IBM and BLP's big data analytics capabilities will help gather valuable insights from the data generated, which will ensure that BLP has an integrated view of its operations and is equipped to take pro-active measures. Using IBM's mobile technology the company will be able to provide all the information, analyzed on the cloud platform, to its ground staff on their handsets and alert them well in advance. This will enable BLP to build smarter operations with higher efficiency and greater utilization.

"The focus of power generation globally, and especially in India, in the next five years is going to be about operational efficiency and productivity enhancements. This requires an intelligent and innovative collaboration between the power and the IT sector.  BLP has ambitious growth plans for providing this service and we needed a strategic partner who understands, and helps us realize, our vision," said Balki G. Iyer, chief development officer, BLP. "A significant factor in selecting IBM was its rich global experience in the renewable energy sector and scalable technology capabilities that suits our requirement."

The solution is expected to significantly improve BLP's Plant Load Factor (PLF), which is essentially the generation efficiency of the installed capacity. IBM will also bring its subject matter experts to help BLP take effective business decisions and make efficient planning, based on the data analysis.

"By making clean energy widely available and affordable, BLP is solving a very important challenge for India and we are excited about collaborating with BLP on this transformative journey. We see tremendous potential for smarter operations, using cloud and analytics, in achieving scale and efficiencies in this business. As a strategic partner, we will deliver measurable business outcomes to BLP by bringing together expertise and capabilities across IBM," said Ajoy Menon, director of strategic outsourcing, Global Technology Services, IBM India South Asia.

About IBM Cloud Computing

IBM is the global leader in cloud with an unmatched portfolio of open cloud solutions that help clients build, rent or tap into cloud capabilities. No other company has the ability to bring together unique industry knowledge and unmatched cloud capabilities, that have already helped more than 20,000 clients around the world. Today, IBM has more than 100 cloud SaaS solutions, 37,000 experts with deep industry knowledge helping clients transform and a network of more than 25 global cloud delivery centers. Since 2007, IBM has invested more than $6 billion in acquisitions to accelerate its cloud initiatives. Most recently IBM acquired SoftLayer with more than 22,000 clients in 140 countries to further build out its IaaS portfolio with an easy and secure on ramp to cloud integrating IBM SmartCloud. For more information about cloud offerings from IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com/smartcloud. Follow us on Twitter at @IBMcloud and on our blog at http://www.thoughtsoncloud.com.  Join the conversation #ibmcloud

For more information on IBM India, please visit www.ibm.com

About BLP

BLP is one of the largest clean energy generation companies in India. BLP builds, owns and operates renewable energy power plants to generate clean energy through renewable sources namely wind; solar; bio mass and hydro. BLP creates clean energy to meet the increasing demand for clean electricity and to address the pressing challenges of global warming and energy security. They plan to grow to 1GW operational  capacity  in the next  few years. BLP also offers pre-development and post commissioning services to wind farm developers, operators, owners, investors and lenders, including plant monitoring for analysis. It has a strong pipeline of projects in India and one of the most experienced teams in the sector.   They are currently located in Bangalore and Delhi.

For more information on BLP, please visit www.blp.co.in 
Follow BLP on Twitter @ blp power

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Media Contacts

Raghavendra Ramesh (Raghu)
External Relations, IBM India/South Asia
Phone: 91-80-406-83844
E-mail: [email protected]

Supriyaranjan (Supriyo) Kar
External Relations, IBM Growth Markets Unit
Phone: +919717443337
E-mail: [email protected]

Pooja Khera
Media Relations, BLP
Phone: +91 9810593836
E-mail: [email protected]

SOURCE IBM