The smart grid is one of the ways electrical utility companies are looking to conserve energy and maximize efficiency . A number of networking companies are already working to be smart grid suppliers attracted by the industry’s potential for rapid growth. Enterprise Networking Planet notes that while networking king Cisco has a variety of routers and switches, until now it hasn’t developed specific networking gear for the smart grid industry.
Cisco Systems has a large portfolio of products, but until now, it didn’t have routers and switches specifically made for next-generation electrical utility deployments, known as the smart grid.
This week, Cisco is announcing its first purpose-built routers and switches for the smart grid, with the Connected Grid Router (CGR) and Connected Grid Switch (CGS) platforms. The new network hardware is part of Cisco’s overall push into the smart grid space, in which Cisco sees billions of dollars worth of market opportunities for growth.
“We’re looking at specific products for the smart grid, and that’s not our typical mode of operation,” Inbar Lasser-Raab, senior director of network systems at Cisco, told InternetNews.com. “We do have communication infrastructure solutions and they serve many industries — this is, however, a very unique offering.”
