Fujitsu General Boosts Air Conditioner Connectivity to Its IoT Platform by 250% Using AWS IoT Core

Fujitsu General manufactures and sells air conditioning equipment and provides humidity control solutions for sale in more than 100 countries. It’s one of the leading brands in Japan, US, Europe, Oceania, the Middle East, India, and several other markets.

Driven by factors such as climate change and urbanization, countries worldwide are increasingly adopting energy-saving devices and transitioning to renewable energy. Fujitsu General is addressing these needs by enhancing energy-efficient technologies like heat pumps and inverters and expanding the reach of smart air conditioners. Using Internet of Things (IoT) technology, owners can optimally schedule air conditioning operations based on their daily routines and control them remotely even when they are away from home.

To implement IoT functionality in hundreds of thousands of air conditioners, Fujitsu General needed an IoT solution that was reliable, cost-effective, and seamlessly scalable. Since 2015, the company has worked with AWS to support its initiative. Toshitsugu Nishimi, general manager of systems development of the air conditioning division at Fujitsu General, says, “We have a great relationship with AWS, both from a services and a support perspective. IoT wasn’t our area of expertise, but we knew AWS could provide the required assistance.”

Fujitsu General deployed AWS IoT Core to quickly and securely connect its air conditioners to the cloud. A managed service, AWS IoT Core provides businesses with the infrastructure to connect billions of IoT devices and route trillions of messages to AWS with zero administrative overhead.

To design the IoT solution’s database layer in line with best practices, the Fujitsu General development team worked with AWS Solutions Architects, who proposed Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). Hirohide Okano, manager at Fujitsu General, says, “Amazon RDS provided us with the stability and scalability for an enterprise-class IoT solution.” The architects also supported the integration of the MQTT protocol, which drives device-to-device communication.

In addition, during discussions with AWS to optimize compute costs, Fujitsu General chose AWS Lambda to deliver serverless computing for its infrastructure’s compute layer. “AWS Lambda made a lot of sense to us because we didn’t have to provision for infrastructure, and we incur costs only when an event is triggered,” comments Nishimi.

“Since building our IoT solution on AWS, we have seen a 250% increase in the number of smart air conditioners connecting to our IoT platform,” says Nishimi. The company has also developed an optional Wi-Fi adapter that customers can use to connect older models to the IoT infrastructure for remote management and maintenance alerts.

Customers manage their air conditioners using Fujitsu General’s mobile apps, which is available for iOS and Android devices. Through the app, they can remotely set up and change their air conditioner’s settings and check its operational status from anywhere with an internet connection. Hironori Machida, group manager at Fujitsu General, comments, “The stability of our connectivity and the performance of our IoT infrastructure on AWS has led to customers giving our app a 4.2 out of 5-star rating.”

In addition, by adopting AWS IoT Core and AWS Lambda, Fujitsu General saved 2–6 months developing its IoT platform and reduced its monthly computing costs by 60 percent. Meanwhile, its IoT platform has accumulated large volumes of data on the performance of air conditioners connected to it. The number of devices equipped with Wi-Fi adapters is expected to more than double each year.

The operational and performance data from IoT-connected air conditioners will help Fujitsu General develop its next generation of air conditioners more efficiently, providing insights into how products are being used throughout the year to cool homes in summer and heat in winter. Nishimi concludes, “Using our AWS-based IoT data, we’ll gain region-specific data that can drive product development and innovations for local markets in a much more targeted and effective way.”