IoT 3 mins read

Greenflex: Leveraging IoT for sustainable development

Green may be the “new black,” but sustainability is not about being fashionable.

Sabrina Bohr Sabrina Bohr
green energy

Preserving and improving the environment is the responsible thing for organizations to do – and is also being mandated by governments all over the world.

GreenFlex has been helping them for a while. The environmental services consultancy brings energy and low-carbon performance projects to life, designing and implementing practical solutions that reduce its clients’ energy usage, while improving performance.

The company does this by integrating distributed industrial IoT (IIoT) sensors to measure and control energy equipment, with its GreenFlexIQ. Its unique business model is structured around three services: environmental and societal consulting, implementation of energy and low-carbon performance projects, and financing the transition.

New IoT platform

Previously, GreenFlex had built IoT capabilities into GreenFlexIQ to help it monitor and manage customer sites remotely. But the company realized it needed to deploy a completely new platform if it wanted to get to market fast.

Arnaud Dejean, IoT Technical Director at GreenFlex, said: “First, we needed a platform for scalability to connect more devices for production management. Second, we wanted to make it easier for the operations team to set up and manage devices in the field more easily.”

GreenFlex prioritized partners that offered reliability and scalability out of the box, with a focus on finding a solution to make data acquisition a low-cost and efficient process across its many customers.

To make the best decision, the company built a list of criteria it wanted to meet:

  • Modular, to connect with a wide range of existing environments and technologies
  • Agile, to support the ability to pilot new approaches and navigate changing market conditions
  • Scalable, for strong growth in current and future markets
  • Multinational, to expand into multiple energy markets
  • Multifunctional, to enable new technologies and business models.

Ultimately, GreenFlex chose Software AG’s Cumulocity IoT Platform as its optimal solution. GreenFlex appreciated Software AG’s ability to listen to its needs, and to adapt the proposal and contract accordingly.

With pricing simplicity, GreenFlex felt confident that it could grow its solution without incurring unexpected costs. And a six-month calibration period to establish specific service-level agreements helped ease the transition after implementation.

Developers love Cumulocity IoT

Its developers also loved Cumulocity IoT—they found start-up was easy and administration simple. Streamlined device management and integration is especially valuable because GreenFlex is actively adding new projects, onboarding new teams, and updating client devices as projects evolve.

“For us, scalability is more about the range of connections we can add quickly, across different device and communication types, rather than just the number of IoT devices,” said Dejean.

Software AG Professional Services team helped GreenFlex get the most value from the IoT platform quickly and become self-sufficient. Developer training covered the company’s range of use cases and helped them implement solutions for the types of devices, connectivity, and remote monitoring and interventions that mattered most to GreenFlex customers.

With less training and development required, faster deployment, and simpler migration of existing devices, GreenFlex concluded that the total cost of ownership of Cumulocity would be lower than any other path forward.

Cumulocity IoT, and the ongoing collaboration between Software AG, helps GreenFlex better meet customer needs – and fulfill its mission to bring sustainable development, decarbonization, and energy efficiency projects to life.

GreenFlex is currently accelerating the transformation of 750 clients. It is committed to creating economic, environmental, and social value with each of them – creating a low-carbon future, together.

To learn more about Cumulocity IoT please click here.

See how Software AG’s Cumulocity IoT platform, the leading self-service IoT platform, can help you ensure reliable, scalable, sustainable operations.