Delivering Leading-Edge IoT Solutions

Socomec is a hundred-year-old, family-owned company that delivers innovative power solutions. The France-based business has over 3,600 employees, twelve manufacturing sites, and over 28 subsidiaries. Socomec’s edge and cloud solutions are used by enterprises all over the world. Socomec’s specialty is providing low-voltage energy installations, from equipment to monitoring, where energy is critical – robust and ultra-reliable solutions for buildings like datacenters, solar plants, utilities, and hospitals. Top performance is a requirement.

As an active player in the energy transition – shifting from fossil fuels to zero-carbon energy sources by the mid-21st century – Socomec focuses on energy efficiency, renewables, smart grids and smart buildings.

Creating Value with IoT

Simply meeting customers’ power needs wasn’t enough for Socomec. To create additional value and solutions that would let customers move their businesses to the next level of performance and efficiency, it faced the challenge of implementing increasingly sophisticated power setups and services – with detailed processes that include governance, project management, change management, architecture, integration, and cybersecurity.

Socomec decided to work with an open ecosystem of experts and partners so it could focus internal resources on its core competencies. It needed IoT expertise – and Altair stepped forward with both the right platform and the expert resources, as well as a reputation for industry-leading customer support.

Altair SmartWorks™ is an open platform with features accessible through an API for easy application development. SmartWorks can also be installed in a private cloud, and it’s scalable, ready for large amounts of future data. "We are using SmartWorks as a keystone of our infrastructure,” said Vincent Brunetta, chief digital officer at Socomec, who is charged with digitally transforming the company. “We decided to work with SmartWorks because it’s a very open solution, very easy to implement, scalable, and that is exactly what we were looking for."

The SmartWorks platform is hosted in Socomec’s own private cloud and is used as an accelerator to build connected services for Socomec’s customers.

Connecting Customers & Reducing Costs

SmartWorks is an enabler for Socomec solutions, and it has allowed the company to transform itself from a manufacturing business to a service-oriented solution provider.

Socomec has already completed future-minded projects for customers, including connecting uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) in the cloud using the SmartWorks platform. Socomec services are layered on top of the platform and are available through a mobile app, allowing customers to get live access and UPS status. They’re also available to Socomec technical support for on-the-spot monitoring and troubleshooting.

One big benefit of implementing SmartWorks has been a decrease in Socomec’s project costs. Using the platform to realize a proof of concept, for example, is fast and easy, and can be executed in just a few days. Bigger projects, such as connecting UPS in the cloud and deploying connected services for customers, also benefit from the open, scalable platform.