Sparx Systems Attends CIM User Group Meeting in Belgium
As a member of the UCAIug, Sparx Systems demonstrates commitment to users of the Common Information Model (CIM) in the global utility sector. Included among these users is the UCTE, who will adopt CIM for information exchange in Europe.
Creswick, Australia, June 8, 2009 – Sparx Systems, a leading vendor of UML modeling tools, attended the 8th meeting of the Common Information Model User Group (CIMug) held during May in Genval, Belgium. Sparx Systems was invited to present at the meeting following recent adoption of its flagship modeling platform, Enterprise Architect, for visualizing power system standards published by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). CIMug is responsible for combining relevant IEC specifications to form the CIM, which has become an internationally accepted model of the information exchanged by electric utilities.
The primary focus of the Genval meeting, which included delegates from some 43 companies based in Europe and North America, was the successful adoption of CIM by the Union for Co-ordination of Transmission of Electricity (UCTE). UCTE's decision to use the CIM for information exchange is expected to lead to wide-spread usage of the CIM standard in many additional applications. A second focus of the meeting was the role of CIM in implementing the Smart Grid vision.
Commenting on the event, Sparx Systems Chief Operations Officer, Ben Constable, noted “It was great for us to be part of this historic meeting. Enterprise Architect has a strong following within the utilities industry in general and was well received by the CIM User Group. The support we have in this community is reflected by its decision to use Enterprise Architect for maintaining the electric power industry’s Common Information Model.”
The CIMug program included two presentations by Sparx Systems, which focused on using Enterprise Architect to extend the CIM standard with collaborative approaches to modeling. These sessions aimed to help maintainers of the standard manage revisions and assist delegates responsible for deploying the CIM model within their own organizations.
“As utilities continue to standardize on CIM, Enterprise Architect will play a vital role in helping both utility and vendor organizations manage team-based model development and the integration of extensions to the CIM standard”, Constable explained. “Enterprise Architect is in a very strong position to do this because of its breadth of built-in collaboration functionality and version management capabilities”, he concluded.
Sparx Systems was also accompanied by Philipp Liegl, from Vienna University of Technology and Michael Strommer of Research Studios Austria who presented on the UN/CEFACT Modeling Methodology plug-in (UMM) for Enterprise Architect. “We were excited to see the strong interest of the CIM User Group community in using UMM and our plug-in for Enterprise Architect called VIENNA Add-In”, said Liegl.
More information about Sparx Systems’ participation in the CIM user group and its parent organization UCAIug, is available from the company’s web site:
https://www.sparxsystems.com/partners/standards.html#UCAIug
About Sparx Systems
Sparx Systems specializes in high performance and scalable visual modeling tools for the planning, design and construction of software intensive systems.
With customers in industries ranging from aerospace and automotive engineering to finance, defense, government, entertainment and telecommunications, Sparx Systems is a leading vendor of innovative solutions based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and its related specifications. A Contributing Member of the Object Management Group (OMG), Sparx Systems is committed to realizing the potential of model-driven development based on open standards.
The company’s flagship product, Enterprise Architect, has received numerous accolades since its commercial release in August, 2000. Now at version 7.5, Enterprise Architect is the design tool of choice for close to 200,000 registered users world-wide.