The Cisco, Juniper Rivalry Extends to the Smart Grid

 The Cisco, Juniper Rivalry Extends to the Smart Grid
The rivalry between networking gear giants Cisco and Juniper has extended across routers, wireless products, and security services for years. But now it’s extended into a seemingly unusual area: the smart grid.  While Cisco recently announced its strategy to develop and sell an end-to-end smart grid network product to utilities, Juniper has been quietly focused on providing networking gear to utilities much deeper in the grid, spanning from the utility’s data center back into the substation (which houses all those big transformers). At the GridWise Forum this week, Juniper’s Eric Toperzer explained Juniper’s target smart grid markets to me, including a partnership announced this week with IBM to provide gear and software to connect with IBM’s smart grid network management software. To date Cisco has announced that it is working with utilities like Duke Energy, Florida Power & Light, Germany’s Yellostrom, and Canada’s Enmax.