20 years ago, large national telecommunications companies still dominated the voice and data market, despite deregulation during the previous decade. Cisco Systems was a small router company, competing with Wellfleet and Proteon.

The energy business now has distinct similarities to the telecommunications business as it was then - feeling some effect of deregulation, but still heavily controlled by assorted country and local government agencies. Emissions trading and carbon offsets, combined with subsidies for alternative fuel sources, have led to widespread installation of solar panels and wind farms, more so proportionate to population in Europe than in the US. At the consumer level, it is possible, although not economic compared to on-grid prices, to generate electricity.

The data communications protocols and standards environment was very different 20 years ago - neither TCP/IP nor Ethernet were clearly dominant (we had DECnet, IPX, Appletalk, LAT, token ring, FDDI, with Frame Relay and ATM still to come). Protocols and standards for energy network control are also in about the same state as the data communications protocols of 20 years ago - many proprietary systems, the utilities expect custom implementations to match their operating requirements, standards are incomplete, interoperability is patchy.

Last week, one year after the formation of the Smart Grid business unit, Cisco announced a partnership with Itron, which makes energy and waters meters. The following day Cisco announced it intended to acquire Arch Rock, which makes wireless sensor technology, "focusing on energy and environmental monitoring and Smart Grid applications".

"Arch Rock will accelerate Cisco's ability to facilitate the utility industry's transition to an open and interoperable smart grid by enabling Cisco to offer a comprehensive and highly secure advanced metering infrastructure solution that is fully IP and open-standards based."

Speculation - will Cisco be able to sell huge volumes of equipment to new players in the energy markets as it did to the new players in the telecommunications markets ? Or will some other, smaller, more agile, company emerge, analogous to the Cisco of 20 years ago ?

Updated to add: Cisco sees a huge market, and promotes RPL ..

References

Cisco to acquire Arch Rock PR
Cisco partners with Itron PR
Global market - IC article
Cisco's Smart Grid plans GigaOm
Greentech Media notices AMI implications of acquisition
Cisco on creating the Internet of Things using RPL

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