Siemens and SAP are joining forces to bring Siemens’ meter data management solution, Energy IP, to global energy and utility companies. Utility companies will now be able to buy Energy IP directly through SAP under the name SAP Meter Data Management by Siemens, according to the agreement announced yesterday.

The collaboration is expected to begin sometime in the second quarter of this year. The companies have also agreed to work together to create a road map for the development of additional tools to support energy and utility companies.

Big Data for Big Utility Companies

"Siemens and SAP have long-standing relationships with utilities and municipalities," said Thomas Zimmermann, CEO of the Siemens Digital Grid business unit, in a statement. "Our smart grid application platform, Energy IP, combined with SAP for Utilities solutions will reach nearly half of all power utilities in the world and will bring our customers a high level of intelligence and insight to make data not only valuable but actionable in today's information-driven world."

The companies said that the energy utility sector is evolving to focus more heavily on transitioning to a more distributed energy landscape. With that in mind, SAP and Siemens plan to help utility customers integrate real-time processing of data generated by millions of connected meters and sensors to provide better insight and control for energy producers and consumers.

"End-to-end digital business scenarios will be the key drivers to really change today’s energy system," Zimmerman added.

The announcement is in line with other moves SAP has made to expand its offerings in big data enterprise solutions. The company recently upgraded its Vora enterprise business analytics solution to provide support for cloud implementation on its SAP Cloud Platform Big Data Services platform.

A Growing Presence in Europe

"SAP views [this] announcement as a unique opportunity for our customers to leverage the know-how and the solutions of the two market leaders SAP and Siemens for IT/OT integration,” said Henry Bailey, global vice president of the SAP Utilities business unit, in the statement. "Real-time access to device and meter data combined with customer and commercial data will help provide utilities with a comprehensive view of their customers and technical devices. We anticipate that this will change the landscape in which utilities will operate in the future."

The agreement will help bring some of Siemens' industrial technology know-how to SAP's enterprise application software clients. In addition to giving SAP a new big data service it can sell to its enterprise clients in North America, collaborating with Siemens may also help SAP expand its reach in Europe.

Siemens, based in Berlin and Munich, is one of the largest industrial technology companies on the continent. SAP, meanwhile, has not been shy about its ambitions to expand its European operations. As part of the upgrade to its Vora service, the company said it would be extending its fully managed Hadoop/Spark platform services to Europe.