For Centerpoint Energy, the Houston-based energy company that serves 3.5 million customers, resiliency is paramount. The company analyzes data in real time and near real time through devices that indicate the state of its power grid; whether a power outage occurs; and whether a customer is having another power-related problem.

Centerpoint Energy created an infrastructure that brings in data from intelligent devices, analyzes that data and suggests decisions on how to solve an energy-based event. And according to Centerpoint Energy CTO Dr. Steven Pratt, for 120 of the company’s 135 years, it has operated in pretty much the same way. But smart meters and intelligent grid devices prompted a change.

Making better decisions faster

“These innovations provide additional benefit to our customers,” he told theCUBE during the IBM Edge2015 event. “The ability to analyze data in near real time allows us to make much better decisions much faster.”

IBM Power Systems and z Systems allow Centerpoint Energy to perform real-time evaluation for analytics interrogation, according to Pratt. On the back end, the company uses about 1,100 different pieces of equipment, much of it from IBM. More than 120 Power Systems servers provide “the horsepower that we need to analyze data in real-time and near-real-time,” Pratt said. “We also have a variety of IBM Enterprise Systems management tools to monitor these systems.”

Availability essential

Centerpoint energy ties its servers to IBM storage. “Of all the technology we have, the most important aspect is resiliency,” Pratt said. “When you’re dealing in real time, you have to have a system and the technology in place that allow you to be as highly available as you can.”

Pratt said that Centerpoint Energy stands behind Big Data as an asset. “We do 221 million meter reads a day, which creates about a terabyte of data every day that we’re required to keep for three years,” he said. “We can do nothing with that data, or we can mine that data and use what we find to the benefit of our customers.”

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM Edge2015.