Upgrades to Updates: Why Grid Software Deployments are Faster and Easier with GridOS Evergreen Author Sticky Kellan Thompson Senior Manager, Product Management Grid Software, GE Vernova Kellan Thompson is an enterprise product leader with more than a decade of experience. His experience bringing first-of-their-kind enterprise asset-management and intelligent virtual-assistant solutions to market has highlighted the need for quality and agility in order to innovate at scale, along with the benefits of cloud computing.Five years in-house as an application-delivery program manager and product owner for a nationally respected utility left him with invaluable insights into the specific demands of the energy industry. From this experience Kellan has come to believe that collaboration drives innovation, and that by partnering together we move faster. Dec 20, 2024 Last Updated 3 Minute Read Share The grid is changing – and the pace of change accelerates every day. Grid orchestration is a utility’s best bet at staying on top of those rapid changes and the many challenges of the energy transition to ensure a reliable and resilient grid. A major part of successful grid orchestration involves accelerating time-to-value for grid applications – which is best accomplished by implementing CI/CD principles, robust automation, iterative product releases, and flexible cloud infrastructure. All too often, deploying a brand-new grid software solution can be a long, drawn-out process. In fact, it’s not unheard of for utilities to finally complete their deployments, only to find out that a newer version has been developed in the meantime. A grid software deployment should be as efficient as possible, to minimize time-to-value, or the period between solution acquisition and solution usage. Automated testing against production-like systems, paired with repeatable one-click deployments ensure quality and repeatability. Moving from large upgrades to smaller updates flattens the resource spend. Not only lessoning the overall spend, but making it much more predictable. That’s why GE Vernova’s Electrification Software business offers GridOS® Evergreen Testing and Delivery for customers of GridOS, the first software portfolio designed exclusively for grid orchestration. In stark contrast to many other grid software providers, we leverage automated software testing, continuous integration and continuous delivery/deployment (CICD) practices, and other innovative workflows to ensure our solutions can be fully tested and deployed in mere months, not years. In addition, our expedited deployment methodologies ensure that GridOS solutions can be updated over time, versus lengthy and costly upgrades. For more information about GridOS Evergreen Testing and Delivery, check out our video on the topic. Author Section Author Kellan Thompson Senior Manager, Product Management Grid Software, GE Vernova Kellan Thompson is an enterprise product leader with more than a decade of experience. His experience bringing first-of-their-kind enterprise asset-management and intelligent virtual-assistant solutions to market has highlighted the need for quality and agility in order to innovate at scale, along with the benefits of cloud computing.Five years in-house as an application-delivery program manager and product owner for a nationally respected utility left him with invaluable insights into the specific demands of the energy industry. From this experience Kellan has come to believe that collaboration drives innovation, and that by partnering together we move faster.