EMC Invest $24 million in Silver Spring

Silver Spring Networks, a networking platform and solutions provider for the smart grid, and EMC Corporation announced an expanded relationship to provide a smart grid analytics solution for the utility industry.

This solution will empower utilities with advanced insights from the data generated from the millions of devices on the smart grid and across the utility enterprise.

Utilities are facing a Big Data challenge in which massive amounts of data are being generated but with limited tools to derive value from it. With the new analytics solution, data from across the utility enterprise, ranging from grid operations to customer information systems, will be combined and correlated to improve grid reliability, reduce operational cost and enhance customer management. The solution will leverage the EMC Greenplum Unified Analytics Platform to build the Silver Spring analytics engine to deliver a secure and standards-based interface supporting Silver Spring, utility and third party application development.

Together, Silver Spring and a team of EMC data scientists are creating purpose-built algorithms capable of analyzing smart grid data to make it actionable and valuable to utilities and their customers. This solution will be available to all utilities, regardless of their smart grid networking technology, MDM solution or other legacy systems.

"The promise of networking millions of homes and businesses has always been about improving utilities operational effectiveness and service for their customers. Using advanced analytics is a natural step towards this objective," said Scott Lang, CEO, President and Chairman, Silver Spring Networks. "As a global leader of innovation, technology and demonstrated commitment to unlocking value for their clients, we are thrilled to be working with EMC and we look forward to benefiting from their experience and expertise."

"Utility companies are rich with invaluable data, from the back office to the network edge, and have an unprecedented opportunity to maximize Big Data solutions to transform their businesses and vastly improve the services they deliver. Silver Spring Networks is a proven leader and pioneer in delivering open standards-based technology to the global utility industry, and an ideal partner for EMC as we extend our Big Data solutions into this key industry segment," said Bill Cook, President and General Manager of Greenplum, a division of EMC. "Together, Silver Spring Networks and EMC are working to enable smart grid information to be utilized in ways never before possible, to reveal relevant trend patterns and uncover new insights hidden within."