St. Louis-based Aclara Technologies LLC has introduced the Aclara Mobile Experience (AME), a turnkey solution for Apple iOS and Google Android devices that performs a diverse range of applications, such as usage tracking, bill pay and outage reporting, and customer service. According to the company, AME will enable utilities to integrate a diverse set of consumer-facing applications into a secure and easy-to-use mobile solution.
Aclara says utilities can brand and personalize AME to meet specific functional requirements, determining which features are offered to their consumers, including links to social media tools. Each utility can specify which applications it includes in its implementation, and those apps will operate in the cloud, providing a simple interface to the consumer that is low-impact on the mobile device, the company adds.
Aclara notes that it has agreements with a number of feature providers to develop bill payment, outage/trouble reporting, home energy management, customer service and demand response solutions. Utilities also can integrate their existing applications into the AME platform through Aclara's toolkit interface. Aclara also has built an AME interface to its consumer engagement solution and will integrate AME with similar applications from other companies.
At the core of AME is a customizable platform that was developed for Aclara by Raleigh, N.C.-based Green Energy Corp. The open-source middleware approach used in the AME platform enables a wider grouping of apps to actually appear as a single, consolidated app to the consumer, Aclara says.
The user interface for AME was done by Charlottesville, Va.-based mobile-development firm WillowTree Apps, while secure user authentication was handled by Alpharetta, Ga.-based SmartGridCIS. Aclara has entered agreements with several providers of advanced utility apps to be part of the initial rollout of AME and says it will announce these relationships separately.
