IBM introduces new Software Products for Smart Metering

Posted by Michael Stal on Mar 11, 2011

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In a recent press release, IBM has announced software products designed to bring a new level of intelligence to the world’s largest physical infrastructures. The products aim to advance smarter cities and industry transformation across water, energy, transportation and healthcare industries by monitoring and analyzing new streams of data.

According to David Bartlett, IBM vice president of Industry Solutions:

The proliferation of computing power into more and more devices, buildings and infrastructures is driving new levels of insight and operational efficiency for organizations around the globe. From rail lines criss-crossing a country, utilities with thousands of miles of pipeline to hospitals with tens of thousands of clinical devices, we can put technology into places that you never could before and glean actionable intelligence.

In this context, streams of data are generated by smart sensors which are connected to central software systems. Using smart sensors, e.g., smart meters, is essential to achieve environmental sustainability. One lever for sustainability is to increase efficiency of resource consumption by adding smartness to the metering devices. A prominent example is the electricity infrastructure where adding such IT-based intelligence is commonly subsumed under the term Smart Grid.

The new products launched by IBM are:

• Analytics Solutions for Monitoring Networks enables predictive monitoring of networks and event management. Thus, network issues are supposed to be detected and pro-actively addressed.
• IBM Intelligent Metering Network Management is used to capture data from smart meters, analyze and aggregate it, for achieving operational improvements.
• IBM Real-Time Asset Locator for Healthcare helps hospitals optimize asset usage and track clinical, biomedical and other high-value equipment. Hence, hospitals can ensure that life-saving medical devices are instantly available and expertly maintained.
• IBM Smarter Buildings Software helps property owners and managers reduce facilities operations and energy expense, and improve asset management and reliability.