Itron, Inc. announced that it has expanded its collaboration with Equinix. The data center will host Itron's multi-commodity Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform for utilities and cities in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). This investment marks another significant step in Itron's continued commitment to enable services and deliver value-based outcomes that solve key challenges for utility and smart city customers around the globe.

Delivering value to utilities and cities, this investment will provide foundational solutions such as manual, mobile and automatic meter reading, meter data management, water operations, consumer engagement and streetlight control. Additionally, the data center will host applications that enable cities and utilities to take advantage of Itron's advanced smart city outcomes like traffic management, gas safety and air quality sensing. Currently, Itron manages more than 64 million IoT devices around the world, including over three million streetlights.

Further strengthening the platform offering, Itron's standards-based utility critical infrastructure solution, supports the EU Clean Energy Strategy and is targeted to fully incorporate forward-looking industry and regulatory requirements. The SaaS solution also supports multi-transport communications technologies, including 3GPP cellular (2G, 3G and evolving 4G narrow band), Wi-SUN/IEEE-based radio frequency mesh, SigFox, Long Range (LoRa) and Low-Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technologies.