SunLink Corp. continues to grow its executive strength with the addition of James Ray as vice president of software engineering. Ray brings a wealth of experience from the financial security space and joins SunLink at the perfect time as the company rolls out its expanded suite of PowerCare services, including intelligent, next-generation SCADA solutions built for electrical grid security, manageability and stability that represent a convergence of proven technologies and industry innovation.
SunLink is investing significant human and financial resources in response to the industry’s need for solar energy stability and the even more pressing national and global demand to reduce grid-related security vulnerabilities. The platform Ray’s team is building incorporates tokenization, data analytics and elements of machine learning to bring the operations and maintenance (O&M) for solar installations to a new level. These solutions will provide security rivaling that employed by financial institutions together with advanced sensing technology and analytics for superior business intelligence.
“There are substantial parallels between the technology and solar sectors, and the convergence of the two will propel solar forward much faster than it is currently progressing. By leveraging James’ proven expertise in financial security technology, SunLink is able to leapfrog our development of the technology platforms our industry so desperately needs,” explains SunLink CEO Michael Maulick. “As an energy solutions company, SunLink is committed to solving the challenges to widespread solar adoption, both physically and politically. I firmly believe some of the key catalysts for growth in our industry are the proper integration, operation, security and monitoring of grid resources. We’re very excited to have James’ expertise on the team to lead our efforts.”
RELATED: SunLink expands PowerCare program into installation, O&M services
“The key is to create a secure platform that maintains an open environment and can coexist with SCADA systems without security risks,” Maulick continues. “James is well versed in what has impeded the financial industry’s quest for new technologies like EMV and tokenization. That’s why his expertise is so valuable to SunLink and the solar industry as a whole – because we can leverage lessons already learned to implement tokenization in scale ahead of the financial sector. For example, thanks to Siemens’ (SIEGY) long-standing efforts to provide consistency, the number of barriers to achieve the same results in energy is very low. The energy industry just needs an innovation jump start on this front, and we’re eager to provide one!”
Prior to joining SunLink, Ray served as founder and CEO of financial services consulting company, IdeasX, consulting for several Fortune 500 companies and large, multi-national banking institutions. Before that, he was the president and CEO of Size Technologies until the company was acquired by First Data in January of 2007, and he continued to run First Data’s San Francisco office after the acquisition during which time he developed several new profit lines of business for them. Previous roles included president and chief technology officer at DoughNET.com, and CTO and COO for global advertising agency Publicis & Hal Riney.
“I see a tremendous opportunity for SunLink to continue to advance the solar industry by retrofitting the scalable, cost effective and secure systems I have dedicated my career to implementing in the financial sector,” Ray said. “With solar penetration on the grid increasing at a rapid pace and grid security playing such a significant role in national security, it’s essential that the solar industry employ the same sorts of control mechanisms and security protocols that the financial industry relies on to protect our financial infrastructure. I’m excited to help SunLink advance the energy industry in this regard.”
— Solar Builder magazine
[source: http://solarbuildermag.com/news/sunlink-powercare-security-executive/]
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