Hi Mike,
Wow, that post of mine from March, 2015 is a little depressing. Reminds me of how far behind we are with this project.
As presented at the UC in San Diego last week (and at various other conferences), we are working on new technology called the utility network. The utility network is part of a larger project referred to as the network management project. The vision for this project has two main components. The first is to make the capabilities of the network available across the entire platform. This means you would be able to view, query, edit, and trace regardless of whether you are on the desktop, a mobile device, or the web. The second component is to provide the ability for a better real world representation of what is on the ground within the GIS. The main purpose of that is to allow better analysis directly within the GIS and to make it easier to move data into other mission critical systems such as OMS, DMS, modeling packages, etc.
The utility network and other components of the network management project are currently scheduled to go into beta later this year on top of ArcGIS 10.5 and ArcGIS Pro 1.4. The first release would follow next year on top of the next releases of ArcGIS and ArcGIS Pro. The initial client for the utility network will be ArcGIS Pro, but all of the capabilities will be delivered through services, so mobile and web support will follow.
To be clear, support for editing and tracing of the geometric network will continue within ArcMap. Support for the utility network (editing, tracing, etc.) on desktop will be through ArcGIS Pro.
Hopefully that answers your question.
thanks, larry