Energy Startup Picks Content Management Service

Startup companies, with no legacy facilities or operations to worry about, have the ability to take advantage of new technologies. Recurrent Energy, a three-year-old entity focused on delivering solar power, found itself in a position to take advantage of the recent shift to software-as-a-service offerings.

"We do not have a data center now and hope we can keep it that way in the future," says Paul Wyatt, COO at the company. Because of that outlook, the corporation became one of the industry's first users of a SaaS enterprise content management (ECM) system.

Backed by approximately $275 million in capital, the energy company finances, builds, and operates solar energy distribution systems. Recurrent Energy, which has 45 employees, primarily works out of San Francisco but also has small satellite offices in Barcelona and N.J.

The company consciously decided that it would not build its own data center. "Whenever a company buys a server, it has to spend a lot of time keeping the infrastructure running," Wyatt says. "We do not think that maintaining hardware, database management systems, networks, application software, or identify management security benefits our business, so we prefer that someone else do that work for us."

The energy supplier's relies on Oracle SaaS solutions, its eBusiness suite and CRM system to support its operation. In the summer of 2006, the energy provider started to work with complex construction documents associated with the energy distribution systems that it builds. Recurrent Energy teams with industrial building leasers, such as ProLogis and AMB, and places its solar generators on their buildings. For the process, the energy supplier analyzes the structure of each building, develops an engineering plan, and then constructs its generators. The company is required to keep the information not only for each project but also for the life of each system, which is about 25-35 years.The energy supplier briefly discussed using an on-site ECM system but quickly opted for a SaaS offering. A couple of vendors offered to host an ECM system, but required that Recurrent Energy maintain it. After rejecting that option, the energy supplier was left with a choice between services from SpringCM and Xythos.

Near the end of the year, the energy company decided to go with SpringCM, which costs the company a few thousand dollars per month (he did not want to provide specific pricing details). One of the attractive features was its ability to open up the ECM to third parties securely. Sometimes, there is one document buried in a folder that a person needs access. The company wanted to provide the individual with access to that item but nothing else in the folder.

Recurrent Energy also wanted to provide a lot of flexibility in how users could find documents. They needed a system that would allow users to find information by searching since sometimes they would not know where a document was housed.

The ECM system was quickly online. "One of the benefits in going with a SaaS solution is its speed of deployment," Wyatt says. "Since the system is already operating, a customer only needs to enter a few commands and then is up and running." The only challenge was deducing how Recurrent Energy wanted to tag its documents. The company had to determine how to catalogue data and assign it various attributes.

The system was operating in early 2007. One benefit was the ability to streamline the financing process. To build a system that generates 1 megawatt of power (the company's systems range from 0.5 megawatts to 20 megawatts) requires about $6 million in funding. The energy company needs to provide its financial partners with information about building projects as well as the financial documents. Putting all of that information online streamlined the process and made its services more appealing to prospective backers.The company has also opened up its system to companies bidding on new projects. "We are doing a lot of construction in Hawaii and needed to get ideas about the potential costs there," says Wyatt. "We set up a folder and opened it up to a number of prospective bidders."

While the ECM system has been helpful, the company would like it to offer a bit more flexibility. The energy provider desires a bit more granularity with the service's security functions so it can let department managers establish who can view various documents, a function now controlled centrally.

Despite that limitation, Recurrent Energy is happy with its selection. "I have used Documentum in another company," Wyatt notes. "We are not in a position to run such a complex product now and ideally, we will not have to operate one in the future either."

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