All the “smart” grid gear in the world can’t help utilities very much unless they’ve got the back-end software to make sense of the floods of data those smart meters, sensors and other devices are delivering.

But not every utility can afford expensive enterprise data management platforms from the likes of IBM, Oracle, Microsoft or SAP. Some would prefer to buy only those “apps” that target the specific problems they face.

That's the premise of Verdeeco's business plan.

Greentech reports that the startup – which has $800,000 in disclosed funding and former executives from Landis+Gyr, Ecologic Analytics, The Weather Channel and Southern Co. on board – wants to model its offerin gs after iTunes. "Sell utilities the songs (apps) they want, rather than forcing them to buy the CD (the software suite) all at once," the website said.