Two different stories recently have highlighted moves towards smart metering for water.  Smart metering may also mean smarter water billing software.  In a recent speech at Chatham House in London, IBM Chairman, President and CEO Sam Palmisano laid out IBM’s vision of the next decade as the decade of the smarter systems. Among the many areas IBM is focusing on to enable a smarter planet is smart water management.  "By a smarter planet, we mean that intelligence is being infused into the systems and processes that enable services to be delivered; physical goods to be developed, manufactured, bought and sold; everything from people and money to oil, water and electrons to move; and billions of people to work and live."

Software lies at the heart of these systems. IBM’s acquisition of MRO Software in 2006 enhanced Big Blue’s decades-long work in the rail, water and other vertical industries by adding asset management capabilities. IBM attained MRO’s Maximo asset management software in that acquisition, and Maximo is a key component of IBM’s Smarter Planet initiatives because it helps organizations track each and every asset across their enterprises—spanning both physical and IT assets, IBM officials said.  You can find more on this story at eWeek.

Not to be left out Oracle, another software vendor, published the results of a recent survey of more than 300 water utility managers: 68 percent said they believe it is critical that water utilities adopt smart meter technologies. At least 36 states are projecting water shortages between now and 2013.  Oracle also found most of the 1,200 U.S. consumers it surveyed felt water conservation was important to them. Specifically, 76 percent said they are concerned about the need to conserve water and said their behavior changes were motivated more by a desire to conserve than to reduce water bill costs. Seventy-one percent said having access to more detailed information about their water consumption would be a key factor in helping motivate their conservation.

IT analyst Charles King said he’s not surprised Oracle would promote smart meter adoption for the water industry. "Someone on the back end has to crunch all the data, and now that Oracle has Sun it can make the case they have a hardware/software solution. IBM (NYSE: IBM) has been promoting the same thing," King, principal analyst with Pund-IT, told InternetNews.com. "Whether you’re talking about electricity or water or some other utility, it’s an enormously distributed, complex network of data."   You can read more details here.