The Grid of the Future – Today!

It’s the dawn of a new era for utilities, and this year’s DistribuTECH is bringing some exciting new developments for the industry.  Held in San Antonio, Texas on January 23-25, be sure to take a walk along the Riverwalk, or America’s Venice!  As you break out your walking shoes to enjoy the view, be sure to stroll by and visit with our team in Cisco booth #2921 at the DTECH event to check out our winter solution launch.

The communications network is the core of digital transformation in any industry, especially in utilities. See how Cisco’s new solutions help utilities tackle the key areas required for digital transformation including high performance, interoperability, and resilience – and how we do it all securely.

Our new Cisco Resilient Mesh Network offering allows utilities to implement distribution automation and an advanced metering infrastructure at scale, with confidence.  Cisco is breaking new ground in distributed control and real-time management of energy grids. Cisco’s EPN Manager, for instance, provides simplified, converged, end-to-end lifecycle management for carrier-grade networks of all sizes. Cisco’s multiservice network architecture also delivers high levels of availability and resiliency while keeping capital costs under control.

Cisco is committed to interoperability, and open standards.  With Cisco, utilities are never locked-in with closed, proprietary technologies and protocols that support only a single service. Cisco has long been committed to network vendor interoperability, as evidenced by its support for standards organizations like the Wireless Smart Utility Alliance (Wi-SUN).

As digital utilities connect to larger numbers of distributed assets, data volumes are exploding and networks becoming overloaded. Cisco leads in technologies that intelligently shift data processing and analytics to the network edge – speeding performance and decision-making. Cisco’s IOx and Fog applications offer utilities and ecosystem partners the ability to transform IoT sensor data and perform control functions within the distributed network infrastructure.

From a security perspective, Cisco is the clear industry leader.  Cisco takes an integrated approach to security with our IoT Threat Defense solution, intelligently connecting each part of the utility value chain – and every network asset – to create a unified, centrally managed whole.  Come by the booth to see how Netflow technology found in Cisco network platforms provides a trace of every conversation in the network. It enables the collection of records everywhere in the network, including north-south as well as east-west communication, to allow for network usage measurements and anomaly detection.

Netflow technology, when combined with an industry-leading machine learning and behavioral modeling platform like Cisco Stealthwatch, helps utilities monitor, detect, analyze, and respond to advanced threats. Cisco Stealthwatch not only detects exfiltration or other anomalous traffic behavior, but also helps analyze it to identify the root cause of an incident – quickly. And with its historic network audit trails, you have days, months, and years of data at your fingertips – enabling you to conduct thorough forensic investigations to determine how and where a threat entered your network.

Our partners are also a big part of our demonstrations. Advanced metering infrastructure is becoming a critical component of the Digital Grid, and we are happy to work with strategic partners like Itron, IUSA, WEG, and Eaton, as well as our validated industry partners like Intel, GE, RAD, Schneider Electric, and Siemens.

If utilities are going to reverse declining (or flat) revenues, cope with an aging infrastructure, improve workforce efficiency, and address new customer expectations – they need to digitally transform.  Come by the Cisco DistribuTECH booth to see how we can help.

To find out more, visit our Utilities website here: