Networking giant Cisco and energy management solutions maker Itron announced a jointly developed smart grid architecture that fuses together technologies from both companies.

The solution is comprised of the Cisco 1000 Series Connected Grid Router and the Cisco Network Management System (NMS). These run alongside Itron’s IPV6-supporting smart meters, powered by the OpenWay Reporting System and the OpenWay Collection Engine.

The platform is the result of an almost two-year partnership between the two firms, established with the intention of developing a smart grid that enables IPv6 networking and communications in addition to multi-vendor support. The latter feature can be credited to the open standards the joint solution was built on.

“Together, Itron and Cisco are setting the stage for the industry. We are transforming the traditional purpose-built, meter-centric AMI solution into an enterprise-class architecture featuring robust network management, standardized security and quality of service,” Philip Mezey, Itron President & COO of Energy. “It is with this technology that we are able to build the smartest grids in the world.”

Canadian electric utility BC Hydro was the first client that jumped aboard, and will start deploying the new infrastructure in March 2012.

Another enterprise vendor that has gotten itself heavily involved with smart grids and other green initiatives is IBM. Late last year Big Blue announced that it will be working on a new initiative called EcoGrid EUin collaboration with the European Union: an experiment that involves community, social and technological efforts all at the same time with the hope of jump starting a nation-wide trend.

A few months before that, IBM released a case study covering its work on the Total Operations Center at the Jeju Smart Grid Test-Bed Demonstration Complex. The company provided consultancy services and management software to the facility.