Itron is a technology company founded in 1977 and headquartered in Liberty Lake, Washington. They offer intelligent solutions for energy and water resource management. Itron has been active in edge computing to help provide these intelligent solutions dating back to a publication in 2006. They have 33 documents in the past ten years, with most of them relating to non-blockchain platforms. Interestingly, they have been quiet this year despite having their largest single year increase in documents last year with 14 (ten patents issued and four applications published). In 2020 they have only a single application published that was filed in 2018.
With no notable changes in the company aside from Thomas Deitrich stepping up as CEO in August of 2019, this shift may have less to do with the company and more to do with their partners. Itron has a long history of partnering with Cisco on smart grid solutions dating back to 2010, and Cisco has become extremely active in the space with over 50 patent documents in the last three years. With Cisco's significant investment in the space, Itron may be content to allow their partner to take care of that aspect of the technology and allow Itron to focus their efforts elsewhere.
Because of this long-standing partnership and Itron's portfolio in edge computing that Cisco clearly has an interest in, Itron could be an attractive target for Cisco to acquire in order to bring their smart grid solution completely in-house. With a market cap of $2.76B it would be a significant investment, but as evidenced by Cisco's $1B acquisition of ThousandEyes this year and $2.6B acquisition of Acacia last year, Cisco has no problem making large purchases when they see value in the industry.
See more about Itron and Cisco's positions as well as the rapidly-growing sector of Edge Computing here.
