If not us, then who? | RAIN
The questions “If not us, then who? If not now, then when?” have been posed by environmentalists, civil rights activists and other agents of change appealing to people’s sense of responsibility and urgency to make this world a better place.
While, as such, we are not in the business of making public calls for social and political change, at Lempea we do feel strongly that we have a role to play in a broad societal transformation that has just started to unfold: the data revolution.
As a company we are uniquely positioned to help industries, government, the public sector, commercial services and consumers take the best advantage of the most valuable asset that they all possess while moving into the future, namely their data.
Why? Two reasons.
First, our team of over twenty experts has a particular skills set at the cross-section of 5G telecommunications, edge computing, cloud infrastructure, IoT connectivity, artificial intelligence, data science, and Software as a Service business models.
Cutting-edge projects since 2017
In their previous lives, our founders and many of our developers and consultants used to work on high-tech projects and internal ventures at multinational ICT enterprises such as Ericsson and Nokia. Others in our team continue to be involved with top-notch international academic research in the fields of telecom and computer science.
Since Lempea’s incorporation in 2017, we’ve done a bunch of customer projects that leverage our skills set in the aforementioned technologies. We have, for example, implemented IoT data gateways for industrial manufacturers to connect their equipment with embedded systems running C and C++ software to the cloud. This allows them to create data visualization and analytics applications simply by dragging and dropping data flows onto a canvas.
(Yeah, I know, right? Where can you shop for C and C++ developers these days?)
We’ve also been installing cameras at retail and hospitality chains, using AI algorithms at the edge of the network to analyze crowds — anonymously -, so that property management at shops and restaurants, as well as their guests, are continuously informed of social distancing with a view to COVID-19.
Let it RAIN
Secondly, behind the scenes we’ve been developing our own enabling technology. 2021 will see the public launch of RAIN, our enterprise data platform. It’s a SaaS product with a web interface that is very easy to use. Anyone will be able to sign up, pull in real-time data sources of their own, then drag and drop ready applications on top of those data flows to start making KPI-driven, AI-assisted business decisions. No coding skills required.
A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) version is already in use by our first paying pilot customers.
In a typical business case, our RAIN software is deployed on a network across the edge-to-cloud continuum, through so-called microservices. Because it makes use of relevant 5G edge AI technologies, data communication remains very fast and efficient. It keeps the cost of data transfer and storage in check, while preventing the proliferation of largely redundant data lakes.
(In fact, it solves the internet’s fundamental uplink problem. But that’s a topic for a different day.)
Lots of good stuff!
The future of energy is green
‘Industry 4.0’ is obviously a sector that will greatly benefit from superior data utilization.
Another sector is one that we like to call ‘Smart society’. Especially in our crowded cities there is significant pressure to use traffic and logistics resources more efficiently, to match supply and demand of services more seamlessly, and for buildings to be smarter about energy.
Indeed, the ‘Energy’ sector is in a league of its own. With CO2 reduction at the top of the political agenda in Europe and beyond, its challenges are complex and unique.
Around the world, energy markets and infrastructure are changing at their core, becoming ever more dynamic and data driven. Nuclear and fossil fuel plants are supplemented with solar, wind, and ‘fast reserve’ electricity stored in increasingly efficient batteries. At the same time, customers want to decide what type of electricity they purchase, when, and from whom.
Smart power grids and Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) can meet those challenges. They can make green energy become a much bigger part of the equation and offer dynamic, transparent pricing.
RAIN has all the ingredients to be their preferred platform for distributed 5G VPP Edge AI. It enables a feedback loop so fast that supply and demand data of energy at the edges is streamed in real time, and for the price of electricity to be negotiated within fractions of a second.
Let’s start experimenting today
This may all feel a little overwhelming, but the important thing is to get started. We have ideas, as we’re sure you do as well. Let’s pick each other’s brains. After all, together we are smarter. Chances are we can get you up and running in no time so you can start experimenting.
If you run a solar park, why not bootstrap a Virtual Power Plant with smart, fast-reserve batteries?
If you are a grid operator, start a pilot project with some of your ‘prosumers’. Experiment with edge AI to generate real-time demand and supply data.
Thinking about transformation, we cannot but reiterate the question: “If not us, then who…?”
Is it time for you to ask yourself the same? 🙂
P.S.:
We’re all in this together, just at the beginning of our journey towards a more data driven society and more sustainable business. At Lempea we are only starting to discover the questions that we need to answer if we want to help our customers in meaningful ways.
What question(s) do you have? Please, leave a comment below, or send me an email at jos@rain.global. Better yet, book a call with our CEO Henri Kivioja!
Originally published at https://rain.global on January 8, 2021.