"We believe that the Smart Grid Forum is a great mechanism for bringing interested communities together to help resolve the technical and business problems in deploying a Smart Grid." Jose Iglesias, Vice President, Symantec CTO Office, Sustainability and Green Technology. "Clearly there are many challenges that need to be considered, this forum will help accelerate the resolution of many of them."

"With the rapid advancement of the smart grid and smart meter deployment across the U.S and globally, utilities will benefit from the know-how of the telecommunications industry," said Michael Khalilian, President, NGN Forum. "Utilities can utilize this knowledge of applications development, infrastructure, network management, and OSS/BSS/Security to help them manage their new interactive customer relationships. The NGN Forum working groups will help to bring the experience and expertise of the telecommunications and information technology industry to the utility industry through the Smart Grid Forum."

The Smart Grid Forum is designed to bring together communications service providers, integrators and suppliers with utilities to discuss the building, monitoring and securing of utility networks as they pertain to Smart Grid. The Smart Grid Forum aims to create best practices for collaboration between the industries through the following areas:

• Security
The security group will develop best practices and standards for the security of customer information and the networks that manage that information, as well as, the secure transmission and distribution of energy globally

• Infrastructure/Network Management
The infrastructure/network management group will enable network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) to collectively meet and discuss best practices around the rollout of utility networks

• Green Energy
The green energy group will focus on innovation in the delivery of energy efficiency management, renewable energy solutions and best practices

• Applications Development
The application development group will identify and integrate applications to further smart grid technologies. Topics may vary from M2M, cloud deployments, energy efficiency, to electric vehicle, to time of use pricing and management

• Business Intelligence/Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI)
The business intelligence/AMI group will concentrate on effective reading of AMI data and work with utilities on how to leverage that data intelligence for improved operational efficiency and customer experience

• Utilities and Integrators Advisory Board
To help address industry challenges and provide insight to lead and develop strategies to drive and guide Smart Grid Forum working groups

• Testing, Interoperability and Plugfest
To accelerate interoperability and develop test plan for validation thru Plugfests

As SGF members and committees we will formulate working groups.  To participate in any of the technical working groups and become a member of the Smart Grid Forum, contact info@smartgridforum.org.