Utilities role. Utilities are buyers and users of IT
systems, not developers. This trend has been clear for
several decades now. The same trend is also obvious in
other businesses. Telecommunication operators,
insurance companies, manufacturing industries, process
industries are also moving away from in-house
software development, and other non-core activities.
Though there are exceptions, there should be no doubt
that utilities will keep following this trend acting as
buyers and users of IT.
Integration trends. Enterprise Information Systems
(EISs) consists of several IT systems/components that
are more or less interconnected. Consequently, an EIS
can be considered as a system of systems, Stevens et a1
(8). Since late 1960, four development steps can be
identified considering how utilities select IT system
suppliers, and how the different IT systems are
connected to each other to form an EIS