oee.ai, a product of IFP Software GmbH, needed a reliable IoT communication solution for their sensors stationed in factories. These sensors are used to analyze the productivity of well-known German and international manufacturers like Müller, Zentis, and Volkswagen. The company had previously used a B2B platform of a well-known network operator, but found it offered limited overview on SIM activity, poor network availability, and insufficient customer support. Network issues and dead spots of certain networks hindered reliable device communication, and the company wanted to be operator independent to ensure the device is always online.

Symestic, a German company founded in 1999, aims to help global manufacturers increase operational efficiency with a cloud-based Manufacturing Execution System (MES) platform that is affordable, scalable, and easy to implement. However, to transmit machine data from their IoT edge gateways (known as Symestic IoT boxes) to the MES application, the company needed an IoT communication solution that goes beyond a normal SIM card. They required a solution that would provide full transparency and control to provide a robust MES solution to worldwide production plants, including those of large German manufacturers like BITO, Brita, and Erlenbacher.

ev.energy is a company that develops a smart charging management software that optimizes charge schedules based on drivers‘ energy tariffs and the estimated carbon intensity of the grid. The company works with the world’s leading charge point manufacturers, automotive and energy companies to deliver a complete smart charging solution to end users. However, they needed a robust IoT communication solution that works globally and securely integrates into their software. They were previously on a contract with a European network operator but decided to switch due to various challenges.

Kairos, a company founded by several bus companies in response to serious cost pressure on French school bus operators, was looking for a solution to provide efficient fleet management at a low cost. The company faced substantial cost pressures as they had to work with minimal operating margins due to government funding. Most fleet management solutions were not tailored to meet the specific demands of school bus operators – they were often too expensive and too complicated, thereby counterproductive to cost efficiency. Kairos was looking for a solution that could provide real-time bus tracking for full control over the fleet, effortless driver wage management, and flexibility and adaptability to the needs of fleet managers.

Mainova AG, one of the largest regional energy suppliers in Germany, was facing a challenge in the competitive landscape of cogeneration using gas fuel. In Germany, electricity sells on a daily basis and purchases are mainly driven by the price of fuel. Other less costly fuel sources, such as solar, wind, coal and nuclear take precedence, leading Mainova to take an innovative step to drive production efficiency. Mainova was interested in lowering its minimum part load, reducing fuel costs, and improving maximum power output — all while maintaining emissions compliance.

E.ON, a leading power and gas company in the UK, was facing economic challenges due to high gas prices, low power demand, and low power sale prices. Many gas-fired combined cycle power plants in Europe, including those operated by E.ON, were unable to be economically dispatched. These plants, which previously ran for over 4,000 hours per year, were now seeing fewer than 1,000 hours of profitable operation. This was often only possible in real-time power markets and only when spark spreads were high, such as when intermittent renewable power (like wind) needed to be quickly replaced. To operate successfully in this time-sensitive environment, E.ON needed combined cycle plant starts that were fast, reliable, and low-cost, similar to what is possible with simple cycle plants.

Platte River Power Authority, a not-for-profit wholesale electricity generation and transmission provider in Colorado, faced a challenge. The company's 668 MW Rawhide Energy Station consists of a primary coal-fired unit with four GE 7EA gas turbines as peaking and backup units. Additional power sources include coal, hydro, and wind. Platte River required a backup for its primary unit as well as a backup for any other operating sources. Additionally, they wanted a hedge against short-term market pricing fluctuations, while maintaining strict emissions controls.

The city of Haverhill, Massachusetts, operates both Water and Wastewater Divisions, providing drinking water to 58,000 residents and businesses, and producing two billion gallons of water on average each year. The facilities are 32-years-old, however, the control strategies they have in place today have put them well ahead of other facilities of similar size and operation. The Water Division is also responsible for monitoring, water maintenance, and water treatment, which includes protecting water resources. The city of Haverhill is currently supplied with water from Kenoza Lake, Millvale Reservoir, Round Pond, and Crystal Lake. The Wastewater Division maintains the wastewater treatment plant, which provides both primary and secondary treatment for the city’s wastewater. Within the Wastewater Division there are two groups—one monitoring wastewater collection, and the other overseeing wastewater treatment, which includes bringing water and routing wastewater into various facilities from multiple points across the city.

Bruce Power operates the world’s largest nuclear generating facility and provides Ontario, Canada with roughly 30% of its electricity. The company’s site in Tiverton, Ontario is home to eight CANDU reactors — each capable of producing up to 800 megawatts. With the nuclear power industry struggling to balance rapidly increasing demand with the costs and safety measures required to support an aging equipment base, Bruce Power identified scheduled maintenance activities as a source for efficiency gains — enabling increased availability. Specifically, the company had more scheduled maintenance activities than capacity, resulting in delays.

The Grommet, a product-launch platform, was facing a challenge in increasing membership signups. They were looking for ways to improve their Google Display Network (GDN) creatives using cross-channel findings. The company wanted to leverage the value propositions of The Grommet to provide browsers more reasons to sign up. They developed and highlighted a registration wall to show users that if they signed up, they would get coupons, daily updates on launches, and the ability to earn $10.

Salt River Project (SRP) provides generation, transmission and distribution services, as well as metering and billing services to over 1 million customers in the Phoenix metro area. They operate 12 power plants, including coal, nuclear, natural gas and renewable sources (hydroelectric, solar, wind, and geothermal). SRP was looking for a solution that would allow them to integrate data across multiple plants for outage management, to optimize maintenance strategies and to understand where production issues might occur next. They also wanted to identify opportunities to extend monitoring across their transmission and distribution-critical assets. With today’s complex business environment, increased public scrutiny and regulatory oversight, SRP wanted a smarter approach to sustained reliability for the most efficient power production possible. To obtain that level of availability, SRP needed a means to readily analyze the data of their generation assets in a cohesive and consolidated manner.

Kahramaa, the sole transmission and distribution system owner and operator for the electricity and water sector in Qatar, had an ambitious business goal. They wanted to identify and prioritize maintenance and asset replacement based on risks related to the current condition of all electrical assets across their distribution substations. The challenge was to find a system that could provide consistent analytics for all assets, recommendations for action based on condition and risk, and provide comprehensive, fleet-wide reporting.

PSEG, one of the 10 largest electric companies in the U.S., was faced with the challenge of providing economic and reliable power as demand and fuel prices fluctuated. The company needed to maintain a profitable business with their existing power generation assets. At the same time, PSEG leadership recognized the value of leveraging data from their plants to make more informed decisions about operations and market opportunities.

A2A, the largest Italian multi-utility company, was faced with the challenge of modernizing their Chivasso power plants to become more responsive to changing grid demands and to boost productivity in a competitive market. The company needed to reopen the plant with compelling improvements to efficiency and a lower impact on the environment. Achieving the lowest emissions compliant load level was a critical success factor for A2A to compete successfully in the ancillary services market space, particularly in their location.

Owensboro Municipal Utilities (OMU), the largest municipal electric system in Kentucky, was facing a significant challenge concerning plant emissions. The Elmer Smith Power Station, with its two coal-fired boilers, was struggling to service its over 26,000 customer-owners with reliable electricity due to these emission issues. Additionally, OMU needed the flexibility to adapt effectively and economically to the rapidly changing energy landscape. The challenge was to find a solution that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve heat rate, and offer more efficient maintenance options to reduce outages related to issues like tube ruptures.

The power utility company, which provides energy services to business and residential consumers, was struggling to meet its target of service jobs per day and upsell revenue. The process was inefficient as technicians needed to call the dispatch multiple times to reschedule appointments or to make onsite sales. The company was in need of a solution that could streamline their operations and improve their service efficiency.

Cornell University, a leading learning institution in Ithaca, New York, maintains 260 major buildings on 745 contiguous acres. The campus consumes up to 35 megawatt (MW) capability to power the buildings. In an effort to conserve electricity and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, Cornell sought a visualization and control system to monitor its operations and drive down operational costs. The university needed a system that could monitor and control major aspects of the campus facility operations, including lake source cooling, water filtration, and steam and power generation. The university also wanted to deliver real-time operational intelligence from across these facilities’ systems, enhancing the use of iFIX for campuswide monitoring and control.

A large American utility owner was experiencing a substantial increase in the penetration of distributed generation within three of the southern states that it served. The nature of renewable energy is volatile and during low load periods, feeders with high photovoltaic (PV) penetration could exhibit reverse power flows, potentially causing problems with protection systems. Intermittent solar production could also result in voltage swings, increasing the cycling of regulation equipment at feeders and distribution substations.

The power grid architecture in the EU needed to be adapted to accommodate significant production from renewable energy sources, with a focus on electric vehicle charging. This large European power and utility provider was working to establish a viable micro grid within defined community boundaries.

BC Hydro was faced with integrating data from two million smart meters and 30 network systems. As they began a smart meter roll-out, the leadership quickly recognized that without the right technology, it would face significant challenges integrating and analyzing such a large volume of data from so many different sources.

The client, an enterprise-level B2B company providing financial services and mobile payment solutions, had two main goals for their Google Display Network (GDN) campaigns. The first goal was to drive incremental traffic for new user acquisition. The second goal was to scale the GDN program to grow the client’s user base while maintaining a profit margin of at least 30%. The challenge was to find the right balance between driving traffic and maintaining profitability.

RasGas, a Qatari joint stock company owned by Qatar Petroleum and ExxonMobil, is one of the world's premier integrated liquefied natural gas (LNG) enterprises. The company is focused on cost and value optimization to reduce overall expenditures and enhance efficiency by improving plant reliability and availability without compromising safety, health, and the environment. The LNG production at RasGas in Ras Laffan, Qatar, consists of seven LNG production trains with an approximate capacity of 37MM Tons a year. The company began an initiative in late 2014 with a pilot for early detection of equipment or system failures and production optimization for selected units of three LNG trains.

Panama Group, a power generation company based in India, was faced with the challenge of meeting India's Renewable Regulatory Fund (RRF) regulatory requirements. The company needed to determine the quality and resolution of weather data for forecast accuracy. However, they were dealing with unreliable site connectivity, which made it difficult to manage turbine data availability and gain closed-loop control. The challenge was to find a solution that could address these issues and help the company meet its regulatory requirements.

The diversification of today’s “food-on-demand” culture has led to an increasing need for keeping food products safe and fresh for extended periods of time—all while preserving its original flavor. Consumers expect their food products to maintain a relatively long shelf life without compromising quality. And as a result of this growing demand, Toray Plastics was faced with producing better food packaging film than ever before. Food packaging film is composed of very unique components for protecting against oxygen and water, and producing these films is no easy task. It requires very tight production processes that are examined with the utmost scrutiny to ensure the highest quality. So, in order for Toray Plastics to meet its vision to remove waste across the organization and remain competitive, the company implemented a new integrated system that allowed it to monitor its film manufacturing much more closely to ensure exact quality standards in every unit.

Excite Digital Media, a search engine marketing (SEM) services provider based in Sydney, Australia, was experiencing rapid growth and needed a reliable, flexible, high-performance infrastructure to support its operations. The company had tried several infrastructure strategies, including housing some of its infrastructure at its own offices, using a co-location facility, and even turning to an infrastructure as-a-service (IaaS) provider. However, as the company grew, its ad hoc approach had several drawbacks. Managing an ad hoc infrastructure was inefficient and keeping up with hardware purchases using a piecemeal approach was challenging. The company was also wary of getting locked into a proprietary cloud environment and wanted to limit the amount of capital devoted to hardware.

Condé Nast Digital Germany was facing high costs and lack of control over its IT operations. The infrastructure that stored and served magazine content was hosted by a traditional website hosting company. An agency handled website development and managed content. The company was reliant on advertising revenue and needed to keep its costs low while delivering an engaging experience to site visitors. The problem became clear when the German edition of Vogue published an interview with a top star. The company had a huge surge in traffic for a few days, and the hosting provider couldn’t add capacity quickly enough. The leased servers added were expensive too. The company had to pay a one-month minimum fee for a server it needed for just a few days.

Intersect Digital, a digital marketing agency, was facing a challenge with its existing dedicated server hosting for client projects. The hosting was not only expensive, but it also presented a problem when traffic spiked or a campaign ended its cycle and competed with compute resources for testing & development. With a roster of several Fortune 500 clients, Intersect needed a flexible solution that would be affordable, yet scale easily to meet demand when traffic spiked. The integrity of the data collected was also of utmost importance to their clients—keeping the database on two replicated dedicated database servers with an additional backup service was required.

Wild Bamboo Rocket, a small consulting company, identified that cloud computing was fundamentally changing the business and technology model for startups. The traditional model of launching a startup involved hiring in-house system administrators, buying and setting up the hardware, and then starting the development work. This model was suitable for larger startups with substantial funding and in-house expertise. However, the challenge today is to deliver a comparable level of service but at a lower cost and with faster results. Wild Bamboo Rocket needed to quickly address clients’ needs to win new business and then quickly assemble the right team and deliver results. They believed that cloud computing could make this possible.

OnCampus Advertising, a media agency focusing on the college student market, was facing challenges with its existing IT infrastructure. As the company's customer base grew, so did the desire to increase the depth and breadth of its services. However, its infrastructure wasn't allowing it to drive business forward and implementing its unique software-as-a-service (SaaS) application was in peril. The company needed an IT infrastructure that would help it continue down the path of growth, but it wasn’t quite sure how to proceed. The company had a roadmap for growth, but didn’t have the infrastructure to support the growth.

Artizone, an online storefront for specialty foods, was looking for a way to scale its eCommerce platform without worrying about infrastructure limitations. The company wanted to focus on enhancing its service and growing its customer base, but was hindered by the need for a robust, flexible, and secure infrastructure that could handle the demands of eCommerce. The company initially ran a pilot offering on a dedicated server hosted by GoGrid, but after the successful pilot, Artizone decided to move to a cloud-based solution instead of dedicated hardware. The company wanted to be able to add and subtract servers quickly to accommodate occasional peaks in demand, without tying up budget in capacity that would rarely be used.