Innovative startups require on-demand scalability at best prices

Customer Profile

BEN Energy develops and implements data analytics based software solutions for energy providers to quantify, predict and affect customer behavior. Their solutions are based on their so-called Energy Analytics Platform. It allows utilities to succeed in tomorrow‘s customer-centric energy markets through data-driven decision making. It also utilizes behavioral psychology to make energy efficiency entertaining and simple. The company was looking for appropriate cloud solutions for energy providers with similar service portfolios.

Working with research institutions (such as ETH Zürich) and utility companies, BEN Energy engages household customers to educate and motivate them to save energy. While at the same time the company opens up new communication channels and revenue streams for utilities. Household customers experience new energy saving initiatives across multiple channels including web, mobile apps, email and postal mail.

The Challenge

“We are in a constant process of innovating our software solutions. So a main challenge for us is to be able to scale easily and add resources on demand for an affordable price. One of our multi-tenant portals is currently hosted at another cloud provider. However CloudSigma’s price-performance ratio is simply far more attractive.”Simon Tietze, Senior Data Scientist @ BEN Energy

BEN Energy prides itself on being a driver of innovation in energy efficiency and customer engagement. At the same time, this requires a constant iteration through the planning – building – running loop.

“All of BEN Energy’s web-­based products are deployed as SaaS. This includes our efficiency portals, electricity tariff calculators and research management systems. We are constantly iterating our efficiency portals. Our products offer a sophisticated web interface for researchers, utilities and utility customers to interact in new ways, gaining energy efficiency insights and building market knowledge. That is why it is of crucial importance for us to be able to run our proprietary software within a fast service performance environment.”

As an innovative startup with a handful of employees, a priority for BEN Energy was to minimize the resources spent on maintaining infrastructure.

In order for BEN Energy’s products to run smoothly, they needed not only flexibility, but also a responsive hosting service. This would allow them to scale existing platforms as necessary and deploy new platforms quickly and easily. As a Swiss company, BEN Energy needed cloud solutions for energy providers with locations in Switzerland. Also, one that would provide reliable support to help the company keep up with their growing client base within the region.

The Solution

As a start-up that is constantly innovating its offerings, BEN Energy had some concerns about the pricing of its deployment. However, by leveraging CloudSigma’s competitive pricing, BEN Energy was able to keep low costs and infrastructure complexity. In addition to this, they could boost their performance and operational agility.

“CloudSigma offered an unprecedented price-performance ratio compared to the other providers we were taking into consideration. On top of that it provided a simple and fast infrastructure and a reliable service, which made CloudSigma an easy top choice for us.”

In addition, since BEN Energy’s utilities employ their platforms to provide an entirely new kind of service to their customers. Most of the data in the platforms is directly generated through the usage of the applications themselves.

“CloudSigma has always been tremendously responsive and helpful. They have assisted us many times with various questions ranging from virtual infrastructure to operating systems.”

The Impact

“Since day one CloudSigma’s infrastructure did exactly what public cloud infrastructure is supposed to do. It melded into the background and effortlessly supported the higher level processes running on top of it.”Simon Tietze, Senior Data Scientist @ BEN Energy

BEN Energy has run all of its energy efficiency portals for Swiss clients on CloudSigma since 2012. Their server software runs on a standard LAMP stack with the CloudSigma x86 platform, which supports Linux. Because of this, getting BEN Energy’s services to run in the cloud was extraordinarily easy.

The number of operational portals and other energy efficiency web applications has steadily grown along with BEN Energy’s client base. CloudSigma has been a clear top choice to support BEN Energy’s growth due to its market-leading simplicity and performance.

“At BEN Energy, we liked CloudSigma’s web UI a lot better than what any other provider was able to offer. On CloudSigma’s platform, we are free to choose what OS our VMs will run. Other providers offered a far more restrictive selection – and we couldn’t pick an OS we actually liked. Choosing to move this portal instance to CloudSigma was an easy choice.”

The Future

“I recommend CloudSigma to any company that needs a flexible solution for an extremely competitive price. If you need a provider that allows an easy 1:1 deployment and an excellent customer support, CloudSigma will deliver.”Simon Tietze, Senior Data Scientist @ BEN Energy

A company nowadays needs reliable partners as well as providers. BEN Energy managed to find a formidable provider in CloudSigma, taking advantage of our cloud solutions for energy providers. The successful technical deployment went hand in hand with integrated customer support, competitive pricing and fast performance creation. The combination of these factors allows the company to establish a firm foundation for future growth.

BEN Energy will have to grow in order to meet customer requirements in the future in a highly agile way. In addition, their main goal is to bring innovative products and services to the market that teaches people worldwide how to leverage efficiency and save otherwise scarce energy resources.

 

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