Analytics juggernaut SAS, already a well established presence providing business intelligence and analytics software in financial services, is now making a run at the energy sector.

The Cary-based software company is now offering SAS Energy Forecasting, load forecasting software aimed at helping electric utilities operate more efficiently. SAS says that unlike other software for forecasting loads, the new SAS offering can be used to plan for multiple time horizons from the next hour to the next 50 years.

The software works by collecting and analyzing data from a smart meter located on the premises of a utility’s power customer. Those meters send a constant stream of power load information to the utility. Those streams produces a tremendous amount of data for utilities to handle and it falls under the catch-all phrase for massive amounts of digital information now commonly referred to as “big data.” SAS has developed software to handle big data in industries including financial services, health care, the two biggest sectors for a company that generated $2.87 billion in 2012 revenue. SAS announced its new energy software offering today at The Premier Business Leadership Series event, a SAS business conference being held in Amsterdam.

Industry publication Smart Grid News calls SAS “embarrassingly late to the smart grid party.” Smart Grid News says that while SAS has nibbled at the edge of the energy market in recent years, it hasn’t made much of a mark. The publication describes SAS as being about five years late to the smart grid game. 

SAS isn’t the only big technology company that has made recent moves into the energy sector. Cisco Systems last month paid $107 million in cash to acquire JouleX, an Atlanta company whose software helps large companies manage their energy use. Cisco characterized JouleX as complementary; JouleX’s software works by accessing companies energy systems via the very networks made with Cisco networking equipment.

While Smart Grid News describes SAS as being late to the game, it’s not an entirely fair characterization. It’s true that smart grid technology has been around for several years. But adoption of smart meters is far from universal. Part of the slowdown in adoption comes from consumers themselves. Many utility customers don’t want to foot the bill to cover the new smart metering technology. At the end of last year, the Federal Energy Commission reported that smart meters have penetrated just 23 percent of the market. A recent piece from GreenTech Media notes that while smart meter deployment has increased, those installations are concentrated in just a handful of states. 

That SAS didn’t get into the energy management space sooner does not mean that SAS didn’t see the market. Perhaps it just didn’t see the point in getting into the space until the market was a viable one. I recently had the opportunity to talk with a SAS executive and I asked him how SAS decides which services to offer and which markets to enter. He told me that SAS’ decisions are based on what its customers want. That’s also one of the reasons Cisco gave explaining its JouleX acquisition. That suggests to me the moves of these tech giants into the energy software space now means that demand for these services is turning a corner. And if they’re turning to SAS and Cisco, that should be a competitive concern to smart grid software companies of all sizes.

Late or not, Cisco and SAS are entering the game and staking a claim. That Cisco did so shows that it sees money to be made here. SAS likely does, too. A company that has established a strong market position and more than $2 billion a year in sales cannot be ignored just because it’s entering a new space.