Embriq Transforms Energy Meter Data Solution to SaaS Offering with Help from Navisite and AWS

Founded in 2002, Embriq helps electric utilities and other data-driven businesses to understand consumption data from smart meters and devices. With plans to expand internationally, Embriq knew that it needed a more modern infrastructure for Quant Core, an important product that was originally built in 2010 as an on-premises Oracle solution.

Embriq had three ambitions for Quant Core. It wanted to migrate the solution to the cloud with the best possible architecture, and to make it available as software as a service (SaaS). It wanted to use artificial intelligence (AI) to make Quant Core more automated, increasing the value that it delivered to Embriq’s customers. And it wanted to make Quant Core globally available as part of its longer-term expansion plans.

Because of the regulatory and climate change pressures facing the energy sector, making all of these changes in parallel was vital to keeping the business competitive in coming years, says Jens Haug, director of products and platforms at Embriq. “We needed to take this step,” he says. “Building this foundation is very important for our international growth plan.” Having already migrated three other products to AWS, Embriq asked AWS for a recommendation and decided to work with global AWS Partner Navisite. A digital transformation, cloud migration, and application modernization specialist that is now part of Accenture, Navisite quickly understood what Embriq was looking for.

“First and foremost, they understood our challenges and needs, and they were able to meet us at the level that we needed assistance,” says Haug. “Because we had a lot of experience in AWS, we didn’t want a partner to take over and do everything. We needed a partner that could be experts in specific tasks, and one of those was the migration from Oracle to PostgreSQL in AWS.”

As it began working with Embriq, Navisite saw an opportunity to use the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP), which provides tools and funding to help organizations migrate to AWS. Navisite helped Embriq apply for MAP and, after AWS approval, launched the first step of the program: an assessment of Embriq’s readiness for the cloud.

Navisite spent 4-5 months meeting with key people at Embriq and assessing Quant Core’s architecture before moving on to the next step: mobilize. This involved designing and then testing the new AWS architecture for Quant Core. After that was completed, Navisite was ready to begin the actual migration.

The migration to AWS started with a utility customer, which agreed to be the first to adopt the modernized Quant Core. The migration plan quickly ran into an obstacle, though. Because the utility customer used a third-party IT provider to manage its energy meter data, it wasn’t possible to migrate data directly from its Oracle database to the PostgreSQL database on Amazon Aurora.

AWS Snowcone, a secure device that supports ultra-portable data transfer, provided a solution. This enabled Embriq and Navisite to first move the utility customer’s data to an Oracle database on AWS. From there, that data could then be refactored to Amazon Aurora. “It’s a little bit more a complex process to do that migration,” says Haug. “Fortunately, there is a high flexibility in AWS to find solutions when we meet obstacles like that.” That process isn’t expected to be needed for the remainder of Embriq’s 61 legacy customers.

After that first migration was completed in the summer of 2023, Embriq and Navisite began working with the next company—the second-largest utility in Norway. That project was set to be completed in early June 2024. With many of the remaining customers having data residing on the same Embriq database, subsequent migrations should go even more quickly, Haug says. By the end of 2024, all Embriq customers are set to be on the AWS SaaS version of Quant Core.

Even before the entire migration project is finished, Embriq is already seeing cost benefits, Haug says. And the initial utility company has found the new application to be far more responsive than before. Haug says further improvements can be expected when Embriq finishes building a new user interface for Quant Core SaaS.

With its infrastructure on AWS, Quant Core is significantly more scalable and flexible than before, which supports Embriq’s ongoing efforts to expand its services from Norway to Sweden, Denmark, and beyond. The application is also more resilient and secure. That’s critical for a service that handles about 60 percent of all the metering data in Norway and with the potential to turn off every meter in Embriq’s service area.

In addition, DevOps best practices and the Well-Architected nature of the solution mean that Embriq’s developers can now rapidly deploy changes and updates as needed. Embriq plans to continue optimizing Quant Core SaaS and adding new capabilities such as AI-powered automation. Eventually, Embriq also wants to make Quant Core available globally through the AWS Marketplace.

Such innovation will be vital as climate change accelerates and more energy-related regulations drive the utilities sector to change. “Now we see the need for digitalization,” Haug says. “It’s very important to have innovation in the utility sector, but also in energy generation generally. It’s about how we’re going to use energy in the future. Utilities need to change. And that is key to what we are doing now.”

Headquartered in Oslo and founded in 2002, Embriq provides Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technology, services, and support to utility companies and other data-driven businesses. Embriq’s solutions help its customers to gain insights from smart meter data, better understand resource consumption, and optimize their competitiveness. The company has more than 180 employees and serves over 200 clients delivering critical services across the Nordic region.