Itron Inc. announced it is consolidating its software solutions into a single platform built on Microsoft Azure, the largest enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure available. Azure will be the backbone of Itron Total Outcomes, which provides business outcomes that address utility and smart-city challenges in an Outcomes-as-a-Service model to lower costs and improve performance.
Itron plans to enable a new range of services around its products, including solar integration, leak detection and analytics. Utilities and cities can benefit from the consolidation of different types of data, potentially generating new intelligence and insights.
For example, solar-related services will bring together accurate, real-time data related to consumption, usage patterns, panel temperature, and power generated and combine it with weather and geolocation data to drive further insights into energy efficiency and asset health. For gas utilities, detecting leaks through cloud-based applications and services that monitor pressure, temperature, and pipeline stress will enhance safety and protect revenue. For water, providing early warnings of potential water leakage using real-time usage readings from households can prevent high-risk situations that lead to large reparation expenses or liability payouts.
“Itron is standardizing on Microsoft Azure to provide higher quality and more seamless services to our customers. It allows us to offer the functionality of many software offerings in a unified, ‘as-a-service’ environment,” said Greg Richards, vice president of DevOps for Itron. “Offering our software applications via Microsoft Azure will enable Itron to be more agile in innovation and development for our customers.”
“Azure is uniquely positioned to empower utilities and cities to accelerate their digital transformation, with the power of our global-scale, hybrid and trusted cloud. Through Azure, Itron can enable a new range of IoT services that deliver valuable insights and drive faster decision making,” said Julia White, corporate vice president of Cloud Platform for Microsoft.
Itron Total Outcomes, including Outcomes as a Service and Software as a Service (SaaS), will be powered by Azure and surrounded by value-adding services, including Cortana Intelligence Suite and Azure IoT Suite capabilities.
Source: Itron Inc.
