Echelon was founded in February 1988 in
Palo Alto, California by
Clifford "Mike" Markkula Jr. The chief executive was
M. Kenneth Oshman. Echelon's
LonWorks platform for control networking was released in 1990 for use in the building, industrial, transportation, and
home automation markets. At its
initial public offering on March 31, 1998, its shares were listed on the
NASDAQ exchange with the symbol ELON Started in 2003, Echelon's Networked Energy Services system was an open metering service. Echelon provides the underlying network technology for the world's largest
Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) in Italy with over 27 million connected electricity meters. Based on the experiences with this installation, Echelon developed the NES (Networked Energy Services) System (including
smart meters, data concentrators and a head-end data collection system) in October 2014 with about 3.5 million devices installed. In August 2014, after quarterly revenues dropped from $24.8 million to $15 million, Echelon announced it was leaving the smart-grid business, shifting its entire corporate focus to the
Internet of things as a market for its technology. Echelon committed to only support existing customers, but not grow the grid business, and to potentially seek the sale of its grid business. Echelon is based in
Santa Clara, California, with international offices in China, France, Germany, Italy, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The acquisition was completed on September 14, 2018. ==References==