Well-functioning utilities are key to powering a smart city. Utility companies, however, typically spend more than 80 per cent of their IT resources simply maintaining the status quo. This makes it difficult to grow and develop new services.

To enable utility providers to deliver better and more sustainable services, powerful data capabilities are needed.

Utilihive makes data more easily accessible to utility companies, so they can benefit from big data, real-time analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

The Utilihive solution is an “integration platform as a service” (iPaaS) – that is, a set of tools for connecting different software applications used by large businesses.

The solution empowers utility companies to deliver data-driven services to their customers in an agile manner, without being slowed down or limited by older systems and applications.

Utilihive provides utility companies with simplified access to machine and enterprise data. This creates real-time insight which can help to optimise utility operations.

The Utilihive solution can also help to plan and develop critical infrastructure in smart cities – and enable new data-driven business models and services from utility companies.

The global digital utility market was estimated at EUR 104 billion in 2016, with a projected annual growth of 12.6 per cent until 2022. More than 1.2 billion consumers are expected to be connected to smart meters by 2022.

Utilihive was developed by Greenbird, a company founded in 2010 with the objective to help deliver innovative and data-driven services faster. Greenbird is a Gartner Cool Vendor 2018 and a 2018 Free Electrons finalist.

The Utilihive platform is being used by several utilities in Germany, the Middle East, Scandinavia and Taiwan in connection with full-scale production.