Utilities are managing billing, CRM, customer engagement and DER operations across separate systems designed for a one-way energy model, which is now expiring. In the UK, National Grid DSO reported more than 300,000 registered flexible assets in January 2026 – up 84% year on year – signalling the scale at which distributed participation is accelerating.

The vendor landscape is not converging on a single answer. CIS incumbents, DER specialists, cloud-native platforms and customer engagement providers are all expanding into adjacent domains from different starting points. The International Energy Agency expects distributed solar PV to account for 42% of overall global PV expansion between 2025 and 2030. The pressures on utilities to act is now structural, not cyclical.

This session will deliver a clear, independent view of where this market is heading, and which platform architectures are winning. Verdantix evaluated 14 vendors across nine capability dimensions to provide that map.