MultiSpeak began with modest expectations in January, 2000 as a collaborative effort between NRECA and a small group of vendors supplying software to U.S. electric cooperatives. It has now grown significantly in coverage, capability, sophistication, and membership. 

To understand how MultiSpeak developed, it is important to understand its origins. In the past, electric cooperatives have had few or no IT staff. This has had several implications. For example, there was a high premium placed on interoperability as the target utilities did not have the resources to build custom interfaces. This emphasis has not, it turns out, lead to a lack of flexibility, extensibility or customization opportunities with the specification as it has evolved. Further, cooperatives often have had no messaging infrastructure or enterprise service buses. Therefore there was a need for protocol features built into the specification to address the lack of message persistence and guaranteed delivery. However, the web services approach used in V3.x and V4.x can also be effectively deployed as a part of either an enterprise service bus or a message bus enterprise architecture. The philosophical underpinnings of MultiSpeak have led to a specification with wide applicability, without major limitations on the ability to customize, but without the requirement to do so in most installations – valuable traits for any sized utility.