Not since Carl Sagan have billions and billions of objects been addressed so well.

You've heard that size matters. While there is merit to the idea, the ability to accommodate size matters even more — particularly in the world of meter data management systems (MDMS).

Ecologic Analytics helped Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) deploy the largest MDMS in North America ever. To be specific, the MDMS handles nearly 10-million meters for PG&E. Impressive? Surely. But the number of meters is only half the story. Once the PG&E SmartMeter™ program is fully deployed, the MDMS will be collecting daily data from 4.5-million gas meters, daily and hourly data from 4.3-million residential electric meters, as well as daily and 15-minute interval data from 750,000 commercial/industrial electric meters.

As you can see, the numbers start to add up quickly. In fact, the volume of data collected and processed will increase 720-fold for residential customers alone.

Needless to say, we're talking about massive amounts of data. And that's important to any utility considering their MDMS options.

If the past is any indicator of the future, and it usually is, the scale demand placed upon an MDMS are only going to increase. Even if your number of clients doesn't significantly change, the number of reads most certainly will as time based or interval billing becomes more and more the standard.

So, why opt for an MDMS that can only claim it will be able to keep up with demand. Instead, go with one that's proven to be up to the task.