SoftwareOne case study

Brainiall uses AI and AWS to help mining companies improve performance and sustainability

An aerial view of a bulldozer in a coal mine.

Brainiall used SoftwareOne to migrate its AI SaaS services to an AWS environment built from the ground up for its mining customers to position the company for growth within this vertical and beyond.

Brainiall is an independent software vendor (ISV) and emerging AI software as a service (SaaS) company focused on bringing next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) automation to the enterprise industrial market. The company's solution helps customers in mining and other industries improve business performance to better meet their stringent efficiency, safety and sustainability goals.

For Brainiall's mining customers, the AI-powered automation software helps significantly increase throughput in the rock-crushing process, potentially generating millions of dollars in additional revenue, while reducing energy consumption, saving costs and reducing environmental impact.

Believing its AI services have the potential to improve business efficiency across many industry verticals, Brainiall wanted to position itself for growth within the industry and beyond by entering new markets and expanding its customer base. It also wanted to develop and accelerate its SaaS solutions with cloud modernisation. Rebuilding its architecture on Amazon Web Services (AWS) could give it more control over its solutions, improve performance and reduce cloud consumption costs. However, the ISV needed external expertise and guidance and turned to SoftwareOne for help.

  • 20% reduction

    in cloud consumption costs by migrating to AWS cloud

  • Faster and easier

    deployment of customer environments

  • Accelerated go-to-market

    strategy using SoftwareOne NextGen ISV Modernisation Programme with AWS

Brainiall logo
Client
Brainiall
Industry
Information technology, Manufacturing
Platform
AWS Cloud
Services
Data and AI Services, Cloud Migration Services, SoftwareOne NextGen ISV Modernisation Programme with AWS
Country
Brazil
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Using AI to improve industrial operations

Brainiall is a young company, launched with the goal of transforming industries by using scalable and replicable AI automation to help its customers improve productivity. This required the company to ingest and process large amounts of data to train machine learning models.

The ISV developed a cloud-hosted AI service that uses data provided through the internet of things (IoT) devices of its customers and other inputs to work like an autopilot. This integrates directly with supervisory control systems to collect sensor data, calculate optimal process parameters and make automatic adjustments to operations. Important parameters include mining flow, water flow, granulometry, input weight, output weight, the speed and power of each mill, temperature and humidity.

Brainiall’s AI automation software currently helps mining companies increase throughput in the grinding process by 5-10%. Grinding is the process where the large chunks of rock extracted from the mine are broken up to extract minerals. This increased throughput can increase revenues by millions of dollars and can cut energy use by about 3%, saving costs and reducing environmental effects.

A black and white photo of a bulldozer.

Optimising product and planning for the future

Brainiall was looking for a partner to help develop and accelerate its SaaS transformation. Developing market-leading products and services, the ISV wanted to grow its business within the industry and beyond by tapping into new markets and broadening its customer base globally. At the same time, it also wanted to improve the efficiency of its AI software to be able to scale it for additional demand and support further growth.

SoftwareOne NextGen ISV Modernisation Programme with AWS

To achieve its transformation goals, Brainiall chose to participate in the SoftwareOne NextGen ISV Modernisation Programme with AWS, which is designed to accelerate and de-risk the ISV business transformation journey with guided product modernisation incentives and services.

The program enabled Brainiall to work with SoftwareOne to implement a new go-to-market (GTM) strategy to extend its AI-SaaS offerings to new customers through the AWS Marketplace. It also helped the company to migrate all of Brainiall’s operations to Amazon Web Services (AWS).

We chose to work with SoftwareOne and move to AWS because we believe the partnership will bring us significant technological and business benefits. By leveraging AWS' technologies together with SoftwareOne's expertise, we have improved the operation of our SaaS model. The SoftwareOne NextGen ISV Modernisation Programme with AWS has helped us reach new customers around the world with our AI services.

– Fabio Suizu, CEO, Brainiall

Brainiall had been using public cloud technology for a long time, but was facing difficulties. To ensure the best possible service for its growing customer base, Brainiall needed the latest technology to provide scalability, security and the ability to collect, process and analyse data in near real-time. It wanted more granularity in cloud services, with a focus on performance, flexibility, reliability, lean architecture and maturity in applying AI and machine learning. Looking at the cloud services in use, Brainiall also wanted to save cloud costs.

A multi-step approach to success

1. Envision Workshop

An envisioning workshop was conducted to conceptualise the needs and focus the business vision, transformation and innovation strategies, resulting in the following objectives that Brainiall wanted to achieve:

  • Near real-time data processing and visualisation – dashboards to be updated every second
  • Using ML and AI models trained on the data collected from IoT devices to optimise processes
  • A leaner architecture, consolidating IT services and lowering management overheads
  • An increase in performance and efficiencies
  • Cloud cost optimisation: up to 20% cost savings on cloud consumption costs per month
  • Easy and fast deployment of client environments
  • Scalability for a growing customer base

 

2. AWS Assessment

To optimise Brainiall's AI SaaS solution for its mining customers, SoftwareOne carried out an assessment. It gathered the necessary information through interviews with Brainiall's IT team. The assessment aimed to evaluate the technical requirements for developing and operating a new and leaner architecture solution in the AWS cloud.

For the collection, analysis and output of IoT data, the objective was to evaluate how data lake, machine learning and data visualisation could best be implemented into the new architecture solution and which AWS services were best suited for this. As a result of the assessment, the main goal was to enable Brainiall’s SaaS solution to visualise data with a near real-time dashboard comprising eight variables with an update every second.

 

3. AWS Mobilise

In the past, Brainiall had a solution that was partially implemented in a public cloud. To unify information from two data sources and visualise the data, the company used another provider. Following the AWS Well-Architected Framework, SoftwareOne ultimately designed and developed a leaner and more cost-effective infrastructure based on the AWS SaaS model, using various AWS technologies to bring more performance to Brainiall’s IoT mining solution. After creating an MVP and test environment, SoftwareOne began using real data for processing and all the models defined for AI and ML. In addition, SoftwareOne deployed an AWS Infrastructure as Code (IaC) service using Terraform to automatically provision custom client environments.

Our AI services are relatively new to the market, but AWS and SoftwareOne were able to provide us with the technological capabilities to achieve our goals easily and quickly. Previously, we had several specific systems in place but we lacked control over them. By deploying an environment on AWS thanks to SoftwareOne, we now have a holistic solution. We can control the whole process and customise the cloud environment ourselves. This not only saves us development time, but has taken us to a whole new level of performance and flexibility. And we have been able to significantly reduce our cloud costs.
– Fabio Suizu, CEO, Brainiall

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The following AWS services and technologies have been used:

 

IoT Core

AWS IoT Core provides the cloud services that connect IoT devices to other devices and to AWS cloud services. SoftwareOne used IoT Core route MTTQ messages, ensuring that all incoming messages can be integrated with other AWS services, such as Kinesis, which forwards message information for data storage in Amazon S3.

 

Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose

Kinesis Data Firehose is a streaming ETL solution which captures, transforms and loads data streams on Amazon S3, enabling near real-time analysis with BI tools and dashboards. It enables extremely fast and voluminous queries of data through sources such as Athena and ML/AI. As a fully managed service that scales automatically to keep up with the data transfer rate, it reduced administration for Brainiall’s IT team.

 

AWS Glue

AWS Glue is a serverless data integration service that makes it easy to discover, prepare, move, and integrate data from multiple sources for analytics, ML, and application development. SoftwareOne used the AWS Glue Data Catalog to create the data tables that were needed to search and query the data stored in AWS S3 using Amazon Athena and the Athena Connector.

 

Amazon Managed Grafana

Amazon Managed Grafana provides advanced data visualisation. Accessing AWS IoT SiteWise, it has been used to display near real-time dashboards, facilitating the development of new views and providing easy and secure access to different users and teams across Brainiall and its customers in different geographies.

 

Amazon SageMaker

Amazon SageMaker is a fully managed service for preparing data and building, training and deploying ML models. It has been used to illustrate the operation of ML in conjunction with other AWS components, focusing on how to extract and read data from sensors that will be available in Amazon S3.

4. Migration

This phase will see the migration of all production data to AWS and is the upcoming stage of close collaboration between SoftwareOne and Brainiall. The goal is to ingest over 100 IoT mining variables into AWS, and to process, parse and deliver to multiple services to provide the near real-time dashboard with a programmatic ML algorithm in Amazon SageMaker to automate the entire process.

The true power of our AI services lies in their ability to dynamically control and automate processes, optimising performance and efficiency. With up to an 8% increase in productivity, we consistently deliver exceptional value to our customers. The integration of cutting-edge AWS technologies further paves the way for our future success. SoftwareOne's extensive expertise in Cloud Services and Data and AI Services has been instrumental in our journey, and we are looking forward to continuing our successful collaboration.

– Fabio Suizu, CEO, Brainiall

Harnessing the power of digital twins

Brainiall utilised the expertise of SoftwareOne and AWS to construct a digital twin of its company, a virtual representation that provides valuable insights into the impact of various actions and scenarios on the business. This cutting-edge technology will enable Brainiall to demonstrate the effectiveness of its solutions to potential customers with unprecedented speed and efficiency. By virtually replicating their mining or industrial environment, Brainiall can bypass lengthy processes, such as regulatory compliance and data access requests, to showcase its AI-powered solutions in a realistic setting. This streamlined approach will significantly reduce the sales cycle from eight months to a mere three months, propelling Brainiall's growth and expansion into new industries. The implementation of digital twins aligns with Brainiall's ambitious growth plans, as it envisions this technology as a cornerstone for future success. By leveraging digital twins, Brainiall can optimise its operations, enhance customer satisfaction, and establish itself as a frontrunner in the AI-powered industrial automation landscape.

Optimised architecture using SoftwareOne and AWS supports growth

In less than a year, Brainiall has solved many of its initial pain points and positioned itself for growth, both within the mining vertical and through expansion into other industries.

Leveraging the SoftwareOne NextGen ISV Modernisation Programme, the company has accelerated its go-to-market strategy, enabling Brainiall to reach new markets through SoftwareOne's co-selling activities and the global AWS Marketplace. The company believes that the future will be AI-driven, and as a pioneer of AI SaaS solutions, it is well positioned to meet this growing demand.

The modernisation of its cloud infrastructure has also been fundamental. SoftwareOne provided Brainiall with an entirely new architecture within AWS to optimise the IoT mining SaaS solution for Brainall's mining customers.

By creating the architecture for the new AWS environment from scratch, SoftwareOne was able to design and develop a solution that met all of Brainiall's requirements. These include near real-time processing and visualisation of more than 100 IoT mining variables such as mill speed, humidity, pressure and water flow, etc., a lean architecture based on the AWS SaaS model, improved performance and significant cost optimisation.

In particular, the newly implemented infrastructure on AWS enables Brainiall to better serve its mining customers by deploying client environments faster and adapting client environments to their new needs. Near real-time processing and visualisation provides the data to make better data-driven decisions. Machine learning is used to automate the entire process by calculating optimal process parameters and making automatic adjustments to the operation.

Brainiall's mining customers will benefit from an optimised and robust solution that will help increase productivity and make mining processes such as grinding more effective. It will help these companies to significantly increase revenues, reduce raw material waste and energy consumption by up to 3%, contributing to the sustainability of the industry.

In addition to technology modernisation, SoftwareOne has helped Brainiall reduce cloud consumption costs by 20%. The company also estimates that the total cost of ownership (TCO) for projects using AWS services is up to 50% lower than its previous public cloud provider.

Brainiall is now well positioned to drive game changing AI SaaS services and solutions for its growing customer base. Its scalable, secure cloud architecture will ensure it has the resources and support it needs to meet future challenges.

Our partnership with SoftwareOne and AWS has been nothing short of transformative. In just under a year, we've achieved remarkable results by harnessing the power of AI, real-time technology, and other cutting-edge solutions. This collaboration has propelled us to the forefront of innovation, allowing us to rapidly empower businesses across industries to revolutionise their operations, more quickly than ever before.

– Fabio Suizu, CEO, Brainiall

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