2016 Year in Review

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2016 Year in Review

With the holiday season upon us and a new year on the horizon, I can’t help but be grateful to those who have impacted me, and OATI, throughout the year. This is a time to reflect on the past, appreciate the present, and look forward to the future.
 
When I walk the halls of OATI, I am extremely optimistic about the future because I work with the best team in the industry. Continued customer satisfaction is something that we are committed to improving year after year, and this year was no different. In 2016, our employees conducted 186 customer trainings and webinars, traveled the country to more than 300 customer visits, and closed more than 14,000 support Tickets – just a few of the many exceptional stats I could share. As a result, I’m happy to say that more than 96 percent of our customers reported that they value their relationship with OATI, which is something I take great pride in.
 
I am also proud of how we continued to expand our product reach to better serve our customers. I often get asked, “Why don’t you stick with webTag, or webTrader, or webTrans?” and my response is always that we, as a company, cannot limit ourselves to one system. We are in the business of providing the solutions our customers need now and well into the future, which is why we can’t ignore what’s happening in the industry right now.
 
The distribution grid of the future, with high levels of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) and demand-side participation, will require a new generation of smart energy solutions to address both economic and reliability functions, leverage flexible loads, and support customer-owned generation and storage resources, to enhance the resiliency and reliability of the grid, while improving the supply and demand economics.
 
While OATI continues to focus on our transmission and reliability applications and energy trading solutions, we also anticipate significant growth in the need to record Demand Response events, provide ancillary services, and facilitate market participation at the distribution level as more DERs become available. We will continue to develop solutions to meet those needs as well.
 
As I look to the future, I’m excited about the opportunities that lie ahead. While it has been rewarding to watch OATI grow and evolve in 2016, there is so much more to achieve in 2017 and in the years beyond. From our family to yours, we wish you a season full of joy and cheer, and a happy and prosperous 2017!

About the Author:
Sasan Mokhtari, Ph.D., has more than 32 years of experience in the North American energy industry, and holds the position of President and Chief Executive Officer at OATI, which he founded in 1995. Dr. Mokhtari focuses OATI on providing innovative solutions, platforms, infrastructure, and hardware technologies that help to usher in new business paradigms in the energy industry worldwide. He holds a doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Power Systems, from the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he also served as Lecturer in the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Mathematics. Dr. Mokhtari is also the holder of a number of U.S. patents, author of numerous professional papers, and has participated in numerous panel sessions, workshops, and technical conferences.