TAILOR-MADE PROJECT/CLIENT CASE
JAO, the guarantor of the electric comfort of 500 millions of European JAO is a Joint Auction Office for European cross-border transmission capacity of electricity. With an annual turnover of 2 billion euros and a very specific activity, JAO is facing an increasing demand for IT services. To respond to its financial and operational challenges, JAO trusts the IT services provider EBRC.
A merger for a single energy market across Europe
Frederik Johnsen, COO, JAO
In 2015, following the initiative of the respective shareholders and strongly supported by the European Commission and European regulators who welcomed the further increase of harmonisation and efficiency across Europe, JAO (Joint Allocation Office) appeared as the natural response to the need for one single auction platform to buy cross-border capacity for electricity. Therefore, JAO is born from the merger of CASC (Capacity Allocation Service Company), for Western and Southern Europe and CAO (Central Allocation Office), for Central and Eastern Europe. This merger was thus synonym of presence across the whole Continent for the Company. As a matter of fact, JAO became a major trade platform on the European energy market. Its shareholders, who are Transmission System Operators (TSOs), own the Electricity grids in their respective countries; for example, RTE in France, CREOS in Luxembourg,...
A trustful partnership
“We are an invisible operation.”
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Already collaborating with CASC since 2014, EBRC was the trustful partner for its ambitious merger with CAO. “Our collaboration with EBRC, our highly professional hosting partner, helped make the decision for keeping the offices in Luxembourg instead of Germany, for instance”, says Frederik Johnsen, COO at JAO. In the same state of mind, its new IT tool, which had to support the new requirements and
bring together the ones from both previous companies according to their specific constraints, had to be hosted by EBRC. “Working with EBRC gave us some flexibility in defining our new requirements. It did not have to be a specific technology (Windows or Linuxbased for instance). EBRC offers a wide scope of solutions”, explains Frederik Johnsen. With twenty-nine people in the office, and soon thirty-four, JAO leans on EBRC professional IT teams and its full Managed Services. “With only a few IT persons in-house, our business generates 2 billion euros a year. We can run a small and very efficient operation internally because the necessary resources are outsourced to EBRC. EBRC Managed Services is something that really works”, adds Frederik Johnsen. “EBRC is proud to count JAO as one of its strongest partner. This international client is continually pushing the boundaries of Service Level Management, on-line reporting, availability and PCI DSS Security. Thus, as true European believer, JAO is a beacon for a brilliant journey that we are excited to be a part of”, declares Ludovic Gilles, Head of Sales BeLux of EBRC.
The hip factor JAO’s work is for the general public an invisible operation. Its activity has to be operational, flawlessly and constantly. A failure would impact many stakeholders on the energy market and they would immediately be put on the spotlight. “As
