Verdafero taps power of IBM Cloud

Verdafero, a San Francisco-based utility analytics startup, has selected IBM Cloud to power its utility analytics platform, allowing customers to reduce their energy, water or waste consumption by up to 30 percent. Verdafero chose IBM’s open cloud platform, Bluemix, over a previously used platform, in order to significantly speed the development and delivery of more features and offerings to its users.

Verdafero helps organizations such as cities, gas stations, hotel chains, health clubs and other businesses owning multiple properties to efficiently manage utility costs and usage across all locations with the help of cloud-based analytics. Through a centralized dashboard, organizations can visualize, compare and analyze their entire electric, gas, water, waste, fuel and carbon footprints across all of their properties and usage histories. With this level of understanding of entire utility usage, Verdafero’s web platform has helped users reduce utility consumption by as much as 30 percent and ultimately cut costs.

“Switching our development to the Bluemix platform has been a game changer,” said Dr. Alastair Hood, CEO, Verdafero. “We wanted a solution that would allow our infrastructure to grow and remain secure as we expand our app into new markets and build new features. Bluemix’s user interface allows our new employees and developers to get up to speed quickly, collaborate and develop faster - and we are now turning around valuable features at a rapid pace.”

With a growing roster of clients, and aspirations to continue to expand across the United States and overseas, Verdafero shifted from their traditional provider to IBM Bluemix to increase solution scalability, security and data storage. This shift not only allowed the company to accelerate its development speed, but also provided the necessary flexibility for Verdafero to set its sights on building new features – such as making its APIs available for external developers to integrate into other, separate apps in new markets.

Powered by SoftLayer, IBM’s global cloud footprint, Bluemix enables organizations to rapidly build, deploy and manage mobile and web apps in the cloud by providing an instantly available infrastructure, as well as a “toolbox” for developers to quickly stand up their app. As one of the largest implementations of the Cloud Foundry Foundation, Bluemix – IBM’s Platform as a Service (PaaS) – combines open standards and more than 60 tools, runtimes and services in Big Data, mobile, analytics, DevOps and more from IBM and a growing number of its industry partners.

“Verdafero is the latest in a string of new clients we have seen come on board with IBM Bluemix,” said Sandy Carter, General Manager, Ecosystem Development, IBM. “With the rising cost of energy and an increased focus on sustainability, today’s organizations need a better, more comprehensive look into their utilities usage. Powered by IBM Cloud and the Bluemix platform, we’re thrilled to see Verdafero quickly building solutions that give companies this critical capability, as well as continuing to develop creative features, which will help industries lower their impact on virtually every natural resource imaginable – from solar power to water to natural gas.”

Since its launch in February, IBM has seen the rapid adoption of Bluemix by key clients and partners such as Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), Financial Insurance Management Corp (FIMC), GameStop, Pitney Bowes, Continental Automotive and start-ups including EyeQ, aPersona and MyMenu, among many others.