Our Progress

Executing On Our Shared Vision

I received several vendor calls about the meaning of [the Cisco-Itron] partnership; clearly it has awoken a number of large players. But the big winners will eventually be the utilities and the industry at large. - IDC Research

WHAT WE'VE DONE

Itron and Cisco, the global leaders in smart metering and networking technology, have teamed up to develop and bring to market an IPv6 smart grid architecture that enables true multi-service capability over a common, standards-based smart grid platform. This co-development goes well beyond the current, proprietary “IP addressing” approach available in the market by providing full, native IPv6 services from Cisco operating throughout a highly scalable network architecture. In other words, smart grid architecture just grew up.

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

This Itron-Cisco collaboration transforms the traditional purpose-built, meter-centric networks widely available on market today into an enterprise-class architecture featuring robust network management, standardized security, and quality of service. Another way to think of it is “enterprise networking for the smart grid,” or “Ethernet for the smart grid,” where multiple smart grid applications and devices can plug and play over a common communication infrastructure thereby eliminating the need for proprietary or vendor-specific integration.

WHY WE DID IT

Our joint solution will help our utility customers accelerate adoption and greatly simplify deployment of smart grid technologies while reducing the total cost of ownership of these systems. Evolving the smart grid to open standards will also unleash innovation within the marketplace for new technologies, new products and new services. This vital effort to evolve the industry to truly open standards requires industry leadership and Itron and Cisco are seeking additional development partners to support and build to the standard for the benefit of our utility customers and our entire industry.

WHAT'S NEXT

At the DistribuTECH Conference in San Antonio (January 2012), Itron and Cisco will be unveiling and demonstrating this revolutionary IPv6 architecture. At the same time, initial field deployments of the architecture are underway at leading utilities in the U.S. and Canada. Commercial availability of the system is slated for summer 2012. To learn more about how you can get involved, contact your Itron or Cisco representative.