Boulder's local newspaper, the Boulder Daily Camera, recently reported that the Colorado Public Utilities Commission has decided to take a larger role in regulating Xcel Energy's SmartGridCity project in the same manner that it regulates other large capital investments like power plants.  This will increase the transparency of the project and is primarily a reaction to rising costs.  In March 2008, Xcel Energy projected that capital expenditures for SmartGridCity would be about $15.3 million.  The company now believes the total cost will reach $42.1 million, not including the costs of operating and maintaining the new grid.  It's widely believed that the all-in cost will be around the $100 million mark. 

In December, the Public Utilities Commission approved Xcel Energy's request to raise customers' rates 6.5 percent. The majority of the increase will be used to pay for Comanche 3, Xcel's new coal-fired unit at its power plant outside of Pueblo.  But $11 million from the rate increase - which went into effect Jan. 1 - is earmarked to cover costs associated with SmartGridCity, including capital investment, taxes and operation and maintenance fees for 2009 and 2010.

The profile of the modern consumer is rapidly evolving and eCommerce sales continue to grow in double digits. It is increasingly on social networks that consumers build their preferences of a given product or service; it is on social networks that consumers gather the necessary information to make purchasing decisions; and it is on social networks that brand awareness is established and brand image is ultimately built.

Following the joint announcement by Cisco, NetApp, and VMware on January 26, a number of my colleagues, including our senior Vice President for enterprise infrastructure, consumer, and telecom research (Vernon Turner), re-engaged in a what has become a wide ranging, and sometimes spirited, discussion about converged infrastructure.  A number of product developments over the past couple years have been the catalyst for this ongoing discussion:

• The proliferation of "pre-fab" IT containers
• HP's pre-bundling of  server, storage and network elements (Matrix)
• The Cisco/EMC Vblock infrastrucuture announcement last December