Water & Wastewater Asia September/October 2021

WATER & WASTEWATER ASIA | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021
uncovered, a systemwide update can be
performed before the new method can be
taken advantage of.
In what areas should utilities be
embedding XaaS solutions?
Abbott: XaaS solutions should be adopted
wherever they can be. This would eliminate
a significant amount of legacy computer
hardware that would no longer need to
be managed. Desktop machines could
be replaced by thin clients, tablets or
smartphones and automatic software
upgrades would eliminate the need for a
software management team to physically
or remotely connect every machine, at
every company location, to perform manual
updates.
During the pandemic, many water utilities
made significant changes to the way they
work. Remote working is now common
practice, and under XaaS models, the benefits
of not being tied to particular premises can
be realised, enabling staff to securely access
information wherever they are.
What operational challenges can XaaS
solutions help to solve?
Abbott: Most organisations do not take full
advantage of all data collected from their
water networks. This is where they may look
towards an IaaS solution, where customers
pay for the delivery of actionable information.
Ovarro is working in partnership with water
authorities to analyse alarms from water
networks. What has been determined,
is that many incidents, such as pollution
events, are often the result of an alarm being
missed. Many operators are so inundated
with alarms, they fail to respond to unfolding
events leading to higher impact incidents that
create operational inefficiencies or result in
penalties.
We have developed AlarmVision, a cloudbased,
real-time alarm analysis service.
This IaaS analyses the stream of alarms,
comparing the frequency to internationally
During the pandemic,
many water utilities made
significant changes to the
way they work. Remote
working is now common
practice, and under XaaS
models, the benefits of
not being tied to particular
premises can be realised,
enabling staff to securely
access information wherever
they are.
Craig Abbott
Channel Sales Manager for Asia-Pacific at Ovarro
recognised key performance indicators to
determine if the system is being properly
managed.
Additional information is also provided to
identify common alarm patterns – is there
one alarm that is flooding the network, is
there a particular site generating many alarms
or is there particular time of the day where
overloads occur? With this information,
water utilities and municipalities can plan an
appropriate response to reduce the number of
alarms occurring to a level where key events
can be tracked and dealt with appropriately.
What sectors should the water industry
look to for examples of best practice?
Abbott: Ovarro collects and manages data
for clients in a wide variety of industries so we
seek to learn from any sector where secure
data management is required. Financial
services, for example, traditionally has the
domain of large, brick-and-mortar institutions
but smaller players have stepped in to take
a significant share of the market, without a
storefront in sight.
Sensitive data like money, assets and
transaction histories are now managed online.
The industry leaders help clients analyse
spending habits and apply for additional
services, adapting to clients’ needs faster
than traditional banks.
What role does innovation play?
Abbott: Innovation and the XaaS model
form a symbiotic relationship. Once data is
freely available for analysis, it encourages
innovation and the development of new
algorithms for analysis. This could identify a
new dataset that needs to be collected, a new
software service required or insights from
existing data.
It also provides fertile ground for users and
developers to collaborate, test, and trial new
ideas for continuous improvement of water
network operations.
How is Ovarro supporting the water
industry in this area?
Abbott: Ovarro recognises that data will
invariably be stored in the cloud. This shift
unlocks XaaS opportunities. We are currently
expanding our DaaS solutions, and are
already trialling SaaS and IaaS packages that
dovetail with the data we collect. We have
recently developed packages like AlarmVision,
and we have more in the pipeline. Some
services will also work with non-Ovarro
systems, providing insight for anyone in the
water industry.
The water sector has a reputation for being
conservative. It is Ovarro’s vision that by
connecting numerous technologies to collect,
store and analyse data, we can provide a
platform for the industry to become more
flexible and innovative, moving away from
legacy systems that are holding them back,
so they can adapt to the challenges of the
future.
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