IWG and Smart Hub: The vision to prepare for the future
In many cases, companies have millions of pieces of data that they do not know how to make the most of, especially when they are located in different geographical locations.
To make decisions about the vast network of facilities worldwide with greater intelligence and manageability, a system for global control may be needed.
How can data be centralised and effectively interconnected, and can it be provided with value-adding analytics?
Smart Hub is a central IoT system for global control and analysis of sensorisation in our client’s business centres.
IWG has more than 30 years of experience in the world of office services for businesses and professionals, operating in more than 120 countries and 3,340 locations.
IWG saw the need to make more use of the available sensor data (digital locks, temperature and presence detectors) to monitor the actual use of all facilities.
In this way, not only would the overall utilisation of the spaces be known, but also, this Smart Hub would allow a more efficient and sustainable use of the energy consumed. The project required ingesting data from tens of thousands of IoT devices, but it had to be efficient and available in real time.
The process
The creation of the Smart Hub was divided into three phases: collection, storage and analysis of all IoT data. And to facilitate connectivity, a centralised Data Lake was used as the main repository.
En primer lugar, empleamos un servicio alojado en la nube que ingería los eventos de los dispositivos y proporcionaba una conectividad segura, la ingesta de eventos, la comunicación bidireccional y la gestión de los dispositivos.
First, we employed a cloud-hosted service that ingested device events and provided secure connectivity, event ingestion, two-way communication and device management.
Finally, we leverage cloud processing services to combine external data and integrate workflows to generate key information, alerts and reports.
Development of a system based on IoT and Azure.
IoT data ingestion application.
“Thanks to the Smart Hub we have developed, we have not only made the buildings smarter: also, with the information collected by the sensors we can now control the occupancy of reserved spaces and therefore ensure accurate and automatic billing, which has had a material impact on the efficiency of operations.
Ricard Moreno, Director Global de Tecnología de Centros y Operaciones en IWG PLC
Results
- Helps you monitor the use of your buildings around the world.
- Monitor key aspects such as occupancy and room temperature.
- Cost and efficiency savings by detecting occupied rooms and workspaces that have not been booked or paid for.
- Future possibilities such as monitoring energy efficiency metrics and deploying ML to optimise and predict occupancy scenarios.
We are ready for new challenges
