Birdz: Leveraging IoT to Optimize Water Smart Meter Reporting

• Functional Applications - Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS)
• Sensors - Utility Meters

• Cement
• Oil & Gas

• Maintenance
• Procurement

• Advanced Metering Infrastructure
• Time Sensitive Networking

• Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
• System Integration

Birdz, a subsidiary of Nova Veolia, is a leader in smart water metering services and other smart city solutions. The company has over 1.5 million sensors and has sold over 6 million modules. However, Birdz faced a significant challenge in delivering data quickly and in a form that is easily accessible and readable. The company's legacy on-premises database was no longer able to cope with the volumes of data required, and the maintenance, upgrading, and licensing costs were becoming prohibitive. The system's limitations were also hindering the company's growth. Birdz needed a solution that would improve the performance of its analytics, enable it to scale up, and work internationally.

Birdz is a French company formed in 2017 from a merger between two other subsidiaries. It is a subsidiary of Nova Veolia and has 18 years of experience in smart water metering. Birdz offers smart metering solutions that range from sensor development to monitoring, transmitting, and analyzing data. The company has its own sensors and IoT network and also interfaces with other meters and low-power networks. Birdz has sold over 6 million modules and serves over 1.5 million sensors. The company is a leader in the field of smart water metering services and other smart city solutions, such as energy and waste.

Birdz decided to build a data pipeline in the cloud to improve the performance of its analytics. The company partnered with Google Premium Partner SFEIR to implement Google Cloud Platform. Birdz built a data pipeline that inputs the sensor data into Cloud Storage before streaming into Cloud Dataflow and BigQuery. This solution allowed Birdz to analyze around 25TB of data a month in BigQuery without any constraints. The company now has 76 accounts configured feeding into the data pipeline, serving over 1.5 million sensors. The data pipeline also enables Birdz to produce daily and weekly reports on the volume and status of the water. The move to the cloud also helped Birdz develop a more DevOps mindset, speeding up system improvements and improving internal skills.

• The migration of Birdz's data warehouse into the cloud has significantly improved the company's operational efficiency. The processing time for data exports has been reduced from hours to minutes, enabling the team to focus more on improving their service and developing new products. The parameters of the reports for customers remain the same, but the speed and efficiency of data delivery have greatly improved. Additionally, the company's costs have reduced as they no longer have to pay for licenses or equipment maintenance for that part of their infrastructure. The move to the cloud has also helped Birdz develop a more DevOps mindset, speeding up system improvements and improving internal skills.

• Processing time for data exports reduced from over an hour to under 4 minutes

• Ability to analyze around 25TB of data a month in BigQuery without any constraints

• 76 accounts configured feeding into the data pipeline, serving over 1.5 million sensors