How Bluemix Enhanced the Smart Lighting Experience

Name of Organization: PhotonStar LED Group plc

Industry: Manufacturing

Location: Hampshire, England, UK

Business Opportunity or Challenge Encountered:

The intelligent lighting market is a fast-growing one, estimated to be expanding at a rate of more than 22 percent annually, to reach more than $8 billion by 2020. But as lighting gets smarter, so too must technical support to make sure the systems are functioning optimally.

PhotonStar LED Group, a British designer and manufacturer of smart LED lighting solutions, was looking for ways to provide highly responsive technical support to customers of its Halcyon lighting system.

PhotonStar LED Group’s system is based on ARM processor technology that integrates LED lighting, sensors and controls. Halcyon is a connected lighting platform that includes hardware and software for wireless LED lighting and control systems.

The LED systems, which are microprocessor-controlled, are optimized for energy savings, circadian and data-centric applications. The Halcyon platform can also provide a connected grid that will enable rich data collection, as well as an ecosystem to enable other devices to operate simply and more effectively as part of the Internet of Things. Integrated Halcyon network sensors collect real-time environmental, behavioral and energy data that enables the system to operate as part of the IoT.

The group was specifically seeking a real-time, cloud-based platform to enable this functionality — delivering a gateway password reset service, as well as automatic system backup and recovery with remote access for troubleshooting.

How This Business Opportunity or Challenge Was Met:

To make this real-time view of customer installations a reality, PhotonStar built an IoT-based customer service platform using the IBM Bluemix platform, including Liberty for Java and Cloudant DBaaS (Database as a Service).

The features that had to be part of the solution consisted of obtaining client details to facilitate customer relationship management activities, and most crucially associate customers with their own Halcyon installation. The solution also had to enable PhotonStar customer service personnel to provide customer support to reset passwords and restore a complete system configuration that would be based on a secure cloud backup.

Measurable/Quantifiable and “Soft” Benefits From This Initiative:

The implementation of a smart, real-time lighting system that operates through the IoT is opening up new business vistas for PhotonStar LED Group. “This next revolutionary step for our Halcyon platform will drive disruption into the lighting industry and building services that will create new opportunities for ourselves and our partners,” Dr. Majd Zoorob, chief technology officer for PhotonStar LED, is quoted as saying in an IBM case study.

The deployment of big data capabilities is spurring innovation across the company. The group now offers the ability, for example, for clients to sync their lighting systems to natural circadian rhythms, which help boost employee productivity – and important feature now sold as part of Halcyon systems.

(Source: IBM, PhotonStar LED Group)

Related:

Case studies in customer experience management

Special report: Four ways the IoT can enhance customer experience