Commentary
Cisco: Smart Grid's A $100 Billion Baby
What's as big as 100 Internets -- maybe 1,000 Internets -- and so hungry for routers, switches, and secure IP-based backhaul communications that it could gobble up $100 billion worth of networking technology?What's as big as 100 Internets -- maybe 1,000 Internets -- and so hungry for routers, switches, and secure IP-based backhaul communications that it could gobble up $100 billion worth of networking technology?If you're Cisco, the answer is the nation's growing energy smart grid, the network linking consumers of electrical power with its producers. Today the smart grid is a fragile creature, but with the announcement of the first set of device standards, the $100 billion baby ($20 billion per year for half a decade) is taking its first eager steps.
U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu Monday listed 16 standards for the interoperability and security of the smart grid, mentioning cybersecurity -- a big concern -- repeatedly. Almost simultaneously, Cisco announced its plans for a smart grid roadmap.
More Insights
White Papers
- Creating the Enterprise-Class Tablet Environment - by Yankee Group
- How To Regain IT Control In An Increasingly Mobile World - by BlackBerry
Reports
More >>Webcasts
- Maximize ROI with Database Consolidation onto Private Clouds
- Outsourcing Security: What Every Potential Cloud Security Customer Should Know
One thing is sure, the Obama administration is fully on board. Last month vice president Joseph Biden outlined plans to distribute more than $3.3 billion in smart grid technology development grants and an additional $615 million for smart grid storage, monitoring, and technology viability.
States, punch-drunk from the credit crisis, are hustling to get in line to get their share.
Time will tell if John Chambers and company have their numbers right. For insight into the smart grid business, it's helpful to understand elecronomics.
What will be equally interesting to watch is whether the potentially huge smart grid technology sector can exist within the limits of a "post-bubble" economy, which doesn't rely for growth on the strength of any single market, or if it will spin off a bubble of its own.
Related Reading
| To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy. | |
|
|
T-Shirt Giveaway: Each week we're selecting one great comment from our readers. The author of the comment will receive an InformaitonWeek Community t-shirt. So get posting! |
Subscribe to RSSResource Links
This Week's Issue
Technology Whitepapers
- Creating the Enterprise-Class Tablet Environment - by Yankee Group
- How To Regain IT Control In An Increasingly Mobile World - by BlackBerry
- The BlackBerry PlayBook tablet's Good Bones - by BlackBerry
- Red Alert: Why Tablet Security Matters - by BlackBerry
- New Visual and Wizard-Driven Paradigms for Exploring Data and Developing Analytic Workflows












