CASE STUDY: Shortened Time to Market of IoT Project with Coiote IoT Device Management Platform

Transforming utility metering

Elvaco, a global leader with almost 40 years of experience in the field of metering solutions, offers an extensive suite of products and services that cater to utilities and real estate companies worldwide, spanning various industries such as district heating, water, real estate, electricity, and gas. Renowned for its visionary approach, Elvaco specializes in wired and wireless M-Bus, LoRaWAN, and NB-IoT solutions, seamlessly connecting over ten million metering devices across the globe. With locations in Sweden and Germany, Elvaco orchestrates projects for companies worldwide.They provide end-to-end smart metering solutions, including gateways, communication modules, and cloud-based platforms like Elvaco EVO, being a premier partner for comprehensive metering infrastructure solutions.

Business background

Elvaco, faced the challenge of expanding its product offerings to meet the diverse needs of their energy and real estate clients. The need for more sensor and device data, remote device configuration, and firmware updates, cost optimizations of their clients led to their focus on building the service for low-powered, battery driven devices by LwM2M protocol capabilities. Historically, Elvaco's connectivity devices relied on power supply unit-driven mechanisms, limiting the range of applications they could cater to.

Problem: Too slow in-house platform development

Following the market needs Elvaco team initially turned to developing their own platform based on an open-source LwM2M solution.

After eight months of building their own solution, engaging three professionals, the company decided to find a ready solution that would need only integration into their services.

The main pain points which led them to this decision were:

• Lack of resources for developing and maintaining their own platform.
• The need to focus more on core competence products rather than a self-developed platform.

Solution: Coiote IoT Device Management Platform

After recognizing the limitations of the in-house project, Elvaco decided to work with a solution provider and focus on their core business needs instead. AVSystem’s Coiote IoT Device Management Platform emerged as the ideal choice due to its feature-rich nature and attractive pricing model that aligned with Elvaco's requirements.

Benefits and Achievements:

Since implementing Coiote IoT Platform, Elvaco has experienced a multitude of benefits and achieved impressive results:

• Shortened time to market of the IoT project - The company noticed benefits of using the platform within two weeks after implementation, they could focus on delivering value to their customers, not on developing the needed features to ensure reliable, secure, efficient and scalable communication with the cloud.
• Competitive advantage with new offerings - They seamlessly integrated battery-driven devices, empowering them to cater to a broader spectrum of applications, including collecting more data for their customers. This enhancement not only bolstered Elvaco's product portfolio but also positioned them as a competitive force in the market. They already have customers using the platform capabilities for their low-powered devices in energy and real-estate companies, who take advantage of provided data to find cost optimizations and new revenue streams.
• Streamlined and scalable device management - With Coiote IoT Device Management Platform, Elvaco’s team can efficiently manage, configure, and perform firmware updates on their devices which is crucial when it comes to market needs. They are managing over 50 000 devices and have plans to scale further.
• Outstanding customer service - Elvaco emphasizes the exceptional customer service provided by the AVSystem’s team, ensuring rapid issue resolution and support. All of this is crucial to ensure the platform reliability and customer satisfaction of Elvaco's customers.
• Standardization of data and operations - By harnessing the Coiote IoT Device Management Platform's LwM2M standard, Elvaco accessed comprehensive statistics at both the top-level domain and device-level hierarchies. These statistics provided invaluable insights into their device fleet's overall health. Standardized register updates and firmware updates are monitored in real-time, aiding in the assessment of trends and facilitating quick decision-making, and cost optimization.
• Integrations and seamless transition - the platform was seamlessly integrated into Elvaco's technology stack. Elvaco integrated data from the platform with Grafana, providing a visual dashboard for tracking critical device metrics. The company emphasized that the transition from their own system to Coiote was also smooth, ensuring minimal disruptions in their operations.
• Platform flexibility - the standardization doesn’t mean being locked in only in ready features. The AVSystem’s IoT solution enabled also some customization and adaptability meeting specific project requirements.

“'Since switching to the Coiote platform, we've achieved more while investing less. The platform offers a wide range of features that would have taken us much longer to develop on our own. Additionally, the transition from our own system to the Coiote platform was smooth and seamless. The level of customer service we receive has really exceeded our expectations. AVSystem’s support team is superb, and any problems we encounter are quickly resolved."

Christian Haraldsson
Head of Digitalization & Product Manager, Elvaco

Coiote IoT Device Management Platform being a part of the Elvaco EVO platform

Future plans for cooperation with AVSystem

Besides scaling their services, Elvaco intends also to integrate their cloud service more tightly with Coiote IoT Device Management Platform, making it a seamless part of their ecosystem. They aim to offer a single user interface for all device management tasks, regardless of the type of device, thereby providing a more unified experience for their customers.

Conclusions

Elvaco's partnership with LwM2M and AVSystem's Coiote platform has been transformational. They broadened their product offerings, integrated with existing platforms, significantly reduced their time to market, and unlocked the value of data insights. The ability to integrate with data analysis tools and IoT platforms opened the door to a new realm of operational efficiency, cost savings, and superior customer value. With LwM2M at the core and a flexible, data-driven platform at their disposal, Elvaco is well-positioned to meet the ever-evolving needs of their customers.