SoftwareOne case study

Circontrol

SoftwareOne (formerly Crayon) ensures around-the-clock availability of Circontrol's COSMOS electric vehicle charging app, optimizing its AWS resource consumption.

About Circontrol

Circontrol is a leading European company founded in 1997 that designs, manufactures, and markets electric vehicle charging equipment for various chargers, from household solutions to high-power systems.

Circontrol's headquarters are located in Viladecavalls (Barcelona), with over 250 employees, and 45 million euros turnover as of 2022.

Its clients come from various sectors, primarily fuel distributors, electric companies, transportation companies, supermarket chains, vehicle fleets, and parking companies. Circontrol has sold nearly 80,000 chargers, many present in over 60 countries. They were the first to deploy equipment in Dubai, covered the initial electric corridors in markets like Australia or Uruguay, and their technology is used in the famous tourist shuttle of Petra.

Client: Circontrol
Industry: Manufacturing
Platform: AWS Cloud
Services: Cloud services
Country: Spain

SoftwareOne understood us from the beginning, it was easy and straightforward. Their knowledge and support in AWS management are critical to making COSMOS a robust solution that we can offer to major clients with demanding SLAs.

Joan Comellas

Circontrol, Technical Director

Objective

COSMOS is an application that manages a high volume of real-time data and demands high availability and performance. Its always-on availability is crucial to ensure the proper functioning of charging points, preventing vehicle immobilization. While Circontrol had complete confidence in AWS services for deploying the necessary IT architecture, their team lacked the knowledge to guarantee optimal COSMOS performance as its usage and demand increased exponentially in sync with charger sales, which have been growing by 40% annually for the past three years.

Starting Point

For Circontrol, complementing their charger offerings with applications that provide better customer service is critical. With this goal in mind, they developed COSMOS, a cloud-native software capable of connecting multiple charging points in different locations, simplifying management. This solution allows for performance monitoring, aids in maintenance, and provides access to various reports on usage and operation: consumption, billing, etc.

Based on their satisfaction with AWS services across different departments since 2014, a market study focused on COSMOS's IT needs and feedback from users of various companies recommended using AWS as the cloud provider for the application's infrastructure. The quality and flexibility of AWS resources to quickly and easily expand capacities were key factors in making this decision.

The Process

Circontrol involved SoftwareOne in the COSMOS project from the development phase after learning about their proposal and extensive experience in optimizing AWS infrastructures. They didn't need to compare with other options in the market. They were also drawn to the fact that SoftwareOne's collaboration is a transparent layer, so their relationship with AWS remains unchanged. Their Cloud Architects participated in defining the optimal resources for deploying the solution, but the true value of SoftwareOne professionals lies in the consultancy and support they provide to COSMOS's responsible team to adjust the consumption of these resources to the solution's evolving usage, both currently and in the future.

Results

The AWS & SoftwareOne alliance ensures the optimal always-on performance of COSMOS and supports Circontrol in its goal of remaining a leader in a growing sector driven by the ongoing shift from fossil fuels to renewable sources.

Why SoftwareOne?

Continuous proactive support from SoftwareOne professionals to align AWS infrastructure with the usage demands of the COSMOS application.
Delegating AWS management optimization to experts, freeing their team from tasks that require high-level training processes.
Assured scalability of COSMOS opens new business opportunities in organizations with high-quality demands.
Access to advantageous AWS consumption billing models through SoftwareOne, replacing traditional upfront or credit card payments.

The consultancy and proactive support from SoftwareOne help us guarantee the quality performance of our COSMOS App by aligning its AWS infrastructure with the projected increase in usage.

Joan Comellas

Circontrol, Technical Director

Similar to the renewable energy sector, the collaboration between Circontrol, AWS, and SoftwareOne has a promising future. In their shared journey, SoftwareOne's Cloud-iQ platform for comprehensively managing AWS infrastructure and containing costs is set to play a fundamental role.