NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 6, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- DISTRIBUTECH 2019 – Smart Energy Water (SEW), a global energy and water cloud platform provider serving over 150+ utilities worldwide, has signed a multi-million dollar agreement with IBM (NYSE: IBM) to leverage the IBM Cloud for SEW platform global deployment over the next five years.
Through the new agreement, SEW will access the flexibility and scalability of the IBM Cloud to provide a common global infrastructure for their enterprise web and mobile applications. These workloads include customer engagement and mobile workforce engagement applications, online bill processing, energy efficiency and demand response applications, reward programs as well as tools for real-time data collection and management in the field. For example, a large scale energy company may turn to SEW to deploy its full digital customer and workforce engagement platform with IBM Cloud. SEW can now scale its services faster, more easily and at global scale to help the company meet the fluctuating demand of its customers.
This agreement comes as SEW looks to grow its business and tap into advanced offerings like analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning and Internet of Things (IoT). By hosting these workloads on the IBM Cloud, SEW can gain more value from its data and accelerate the development of new tools that can help improve efficiency and engage customers in new and personalized ways.
The energy and utilities industry is grappling with an aging infrastructure, growing client demand for affordable, reliable and environmentally sustainable electricity, as well as stringent government mandates on energy efficiency and water conservation. These challenges, coupled with the growing expectations of today's tech-savvy consumers, have driven a rapid need for change and are forcing many utilities to create new business platforms and tap new technologies to solidify a competitive advantage.
"Consumers are open to new ways of engaging with their utility," said Harman Sandhu, President Smart Energy Water. "Together with IBM, we can deliver solutions at large scale that help utilities lower the cost-to-serve by moving customers from the call center to lower-cost digital channels, personalize service to increase overall customer satisfaction, and target customers for the right opportunities for value-added programs and services."
The SEW and IBM agreement also provides a platform to jointly expand accretive and complementary go-to-market efforts globally.
"Smart Energy Water is anticipating the major impact connected technologies will have on their customers business," said Brad Gammons, global managing director, IBM Energy, Environment and Utilities. "By investing in data, their workers can do their job better than ever before and customers will have access to self-service capabilities that can help improve client service."
From managing renewables' fluctuating energy levels to bringing new efficiency tools to consumers, utility providers are increasingly turning to hybrid multicloud solutions to help meet the demands of a more sustainability-focused, digital society. TenneT Energy, Ista UK, and Hydro Ottawa have recently turned to the IBM Cloud to help them build new customer services, save money, and generate revenue.
For more information about IBM Cloud's work with energy and utilities visit: https://www.ibm.com/industries/energy
Contact
Jeannine Kilbride
IBM Communications
jkilbri@us.ibm.com
860-997-6277
SOURCE IBM
