Cloud system being implemented to govern smart electrical meters

Officials from IBM recently announced a partnership with British telecom Cable & Wireless that will establish a collaboration to oversee power usage. The two companies will work together to create and implement a cloud computing structure that will govern roughly 50 million smart electrical meters in the UK.

The managed IT system will monitor and analyze the amount of power being utilized at British homes and businesses in order to reduce the country's energy usage, and ultimately, reduce the area's carbon footprint.

The UK government has a plan in place to reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050, and has been looking to have smart meters installed in every home by 2020. Thus, in addition to IBM and C&W, many other wireless companies have focused on creating smart meter systems, hoping to receive a contract from the government, which could be worth as much as $14 billion, to install them.

IBM and C&W's system will access data from each smart system several times a day, and then store it in a UK-hosted cloud, which power utilities can access to conduct their own analysis.

The managed IT service has seen growth in the UK lately. Recently, the government has considered looking into utilizing Google Apps to improve its efficiency.