Reconnection of electricity meters, payment of wages and claims, among the eight threatened services due to the ‘critical’ status of CNEL’s computer servers

At least eight services provided by the National Electric Corporation, CNEL, are at risk of ‘collapse’ due to the ‘obsolescence’ of computer servers where it stores applications, programs and all information worth more than $2.7 million for customers.

Several reports from the Department of Infrastructure and Information Technology reveal the ‘criticality’ of the data centers of CNEL’s business units across the country, whose storage capacity has reached a critical point.

“The condition of the corporate servers located in the Data Center is critical due to storage and processing, and work continues on outdated equipment that is without factory support because it has been discontinued, for which the vendors are not responsible. off and not on again,” CNEL’s internal documents state.

CNEL has provided a web portal for users to advise on power outages depending on their sector

They attribute the lack of budget in the field of technological infrastructure as the reason that limited the possibility of providing new services, because minimal funds were allocated for their work.

“In the business units, the situation is chaotic, where desktop computers are configured as servers, and the real servers are already outdated, more than ten years old from the date of purchase,” warns reports supporting the emergency purchase of $2.9 million worth of equipment, procurement which was registered on the Sercop public procurement portal on October 27 and in which the public company was invited as a supplier of CNT equipment.

The award of the contract was scheduled for November 30, after the first purchase attempt was made in March this year, but the process was declared invalid because the four bids received did not meet the requirements.

The data center includes a room of medium or larger size in which numerous computer equipment is located, which provides access to all the information necessary for the operations of an organization, company, or bank. In the CNEL data center, for example, historical data about customers, their accounts, requests and procedures is stored.

How to charge for damage to devices during a power outage?

“If the data center goes down, applications can go down, websites can go down; The machine does not respond, because it has no memory, because it needs more space, and there is no more; It takes a while and it doesn’t load,” explained the information technology expert.

CNEL reports show that, according to international standards, the servers should have already been refurbished and their storage capacity increased. Several images pulled from the server show that “warning volume is critical” and that “server memory activity is at 100%, at this percentage servers can crash.”

Some of them, which contain core services and customer service systems, must be “immediately migrated” to new equipment, as they “reflect that they have 0 days left to crash,” the entity’s documents reveal.

Two computer experts consulted explained that servers generate warnings when their capacity approaches 80%, precisely to avoid collapse and speed up equipment replacement. “In the technological infrastructure, we cannot cover more than 80%, because then it does not allow us to provide a solution when something is damaged, this works with a gap of 75%, 80% maximum, it cannot be raised higher. This issues a warning that it is already at 80%, that action must be taken, that it is no longer the recommended infrastructure. “They should have acted when the first alarm came.”

From January to August 2023, public companies generated $12.1 billion, 75% coming from Petroecuador: Jorge Benavides

The collapse of the server would mean a short-term impact on eight services, CNEL technicians warn. Among them, for example, is electronic billing, since invoices for clients could not be issued electronically, as prescribed by the Tax Administration.

Nor can salary payments be made through different banking or financial institutions, which would mean that the entire collection management would be directed to CNEL agencies. Each day Electric Corporation collects $2.2 million from energy service bills.

Attention to customer complaints would also be affected, as call center agents would not be able to access information about customers’ computers when they call to enter requests or voice complaints.

CNEL’s administrative and financial system will also be affected by the inability to generate payments to suppliers and the institution’s own staff. Another risk would be the inability to access systems containing user routes; without it, technicians would not be able to reach homes for reconnection or visits.

Email would also collapse and virtual meetings could not be attended, as is currently done, which “serves to relieve agencies.”

CNEL has eleven business units in the country, each with a different technological infrastructure

The ‘critical’ situation of computer servers, which contain all CNEL operations, stems from the diversity of brands, models or technologies used by different business units at national level.

This dates back to 2009, when CNEL was created and when ten electricity distribution companies merged, to which the Guayaquil electricity distribution company was added in 2014, thus completing the 11 units that currently make up the Corporation.

“Each of the units had its own needs and vision regarding information technologies, which after the merger resulted in a very heterogeneous technological infrastructure, with different brands, models and technological architectures, which further increases the age of a large part of the equipment, which makes its maintenance very difficult. expensive and complex,” according to CNEL reports.

It was concluded that this complexity “led to operational inefficiency and total dependence on third parties, due to the practical impossibility of having technical staff specialized in all the technologies at CNEL’s disposal, a situation that still partly persists”.