Software AG and Telstra partner to develop new solution for Australian utilities

Software AG and Telstra, Australia's largest telecommunications company announced a partnership to create a solution for digital automated water management.

Based on Telstra's IoT platform and the Cumulocity IoT Solution Accelerator for Water Management, the solution will provide utilities with a quick way to gain insights from meter data to minimise costs involved with supplying water to customers.

Software AG head of IoT ANZ Tony Drewitt says, "Water conservation and management is a top priority for many countries, cities and remote areas and we are excited to be helping create a solution that will address this.

"In partnership with Telstra, we are trialling a Cumulocity IoT-based solution at Western Australia's Busselton Water. Combining digital meters, dedicated pressure sensors and Telstra's NB-IoT network with our IoT analytics solution, we are able to deliver true water management-as-a-service."

The solution collects available sensor data like pressure, consumption, and alerts such as pressure drop from a new generation of digital water meters managed via Telstra's IoT platform and the Cumulocity IoT Accelerator running in the cloud.

The solution offers off-the-shelf tools for monitoring and managing all this data – along with business rules. Dashboards provide users with near real-time full state-of-play at any given time.

Utilities can add customisable tools and water utility specific dashboards to monitor other data metrics such as aggregated consumption over time, min/max/average flow and trend analysis, as well as peak and non-peak consumption.

Telstra will offer the solution to water utilities around Australia either on a stand-alone basis or as part of their end to end "IoT for Intelligent Utilities" package for water utilities.

At Busselton Water, where a Proof of Concept is underway, the solution will not only help to manage its water system but will also allow the optimisation of the power consumption associated with the utility's water distribution system.

Busselton Water CEO Chris Elliott says, "With water being such a scarce resource, the use of digital technology to help us better monitor and manage our system will be a huge benefit to our business. This is not just in the conservation of water, but in the provision of more reliable, cost-effective water services to our consumer and business customers.