By Alan Radding
Deregulation changes everything. At least that was the case in the Canadian energy industry, which three years ago faced deregulation similar to that occurring in the U.S. For Canadian utilities like Union Gas Limited, Chatham, Ontario, an integrated natural gas storage, transportation, and distribution utility, deregulation meant new business processes, new customers, new competitors, new relationships with existing customers, and more.
For Union Gas's information systems, deregulation presented a new set of challenges, radically different from anything the traditional IT department had ever faced. And the scariest of all the challenges was the likelihood that the company would have to connect its core systems with those of its largest customers and the new energy middlemen pursuing the opportunities that would follow deregulation.
