BOSTON, May 31, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Greentech Media announces today that Karen Austin, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of PG &E, will be the Utility Keynote Speaker for "The Soft Grid: Big Data, Analytics & the Cloud for the Future Smart Grid." The two-day conference will be held on Aug. 14-15, 2012 at the PG &E Headquarters in San Francisco, CA. Greentech Media is producing the conference and PG &E is the Host Utility.
The use and understanding of big data and analytics in industries from healthcare to baseball has expanded greatly in recent years; The Soft Grid will focus on how these trends will shape the energy and utility industry. Smart grid equipment vendors, data analytics experts, software as a service (SaaS) companies, electric utilities, and venture capitalists will all weigh-in on the current implications of big data and the growing smart grid.
Greentech Media's research arm, GTM Research, has based the conference program (which can be found on the event website) off of trends identified by their market analyst team. "With the advent of big data and analytics, the utility industry is on the cusp of a tremendous wave of innovation that will forever change the way in which utilities operate," said David Leeds, Senior Manager of Smart Grid Research at GTM Research. "The change will effect not just the entirety of their operations but also their relationship to their customers and the new services which they can offer."
"Now that intelligent communications networks, nodes, digital meters, sensors, etc., are being deployed throughout our nation's distribution grids, large amounts of new data need to be collected, stored, managed, secured, analyzed and acted upon," said Rick Thompson, President and Co-Founder of Greentech Media. "This conference, with the leadership of utilities like PG &E, will help find solutions to help utilities make the transition to an intelligent system smoother for the organizations and the consumers."
Registration opened this week for the conference. Registration is available for $795 through July 6, 2012 and for $995 from July 7, 2012 until the conference date. Find out more at the conference website: http://www.greentechmedia.com/events/live/the-soft-grid-2012
About Greentech Media
Greentech Media delivers news, research, and analysis in the business-to-business greentech market. Using an integrated platform, we produce high quality products, whether it is industry news, market research or networking events. GTM Research, the research arm of the company, produces in-depth market reports and is the publisher of PV News, a monthly solar market tracker. Greentech Media is headquartered in Boston, MA, with operations in New York, NY, and San Francisco, CA. For more information, visit: greentechmedia.com, follow us on twitter: @greentechmedia, or like us on Facebook: facebook.com/greentechmedia.
The Soft Grid logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=13089
The Greentech Media logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=12178