Flow saves companies €1 million-plus to manage EV fleets
Flow moves IT workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for enhanced security and performance of electric vehicle fleets and IoT-connected devices.
“Oracle was fully engaged in the success of this transition. The support that we got was incredible. Working very closely together on this project was a game changer for us, something that we could not find elsewhere—it was more than technology. Running Flow SMM on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure gives us peace of mind knowing that things are not going to fail.”
Business challenges
Flow is a Portuguese tech startup with 35 engineers and more than 10 years of experience in the electrification and mobility industry. After its beginnings at a research think tank, the company was founded in 2019 through a partnership between Galp Energia, Portugal’s leading oil, gas, and renewable energies supplier, and CEiiA (Center of Engineering and Product Development), a government-backed organization that designs, develops, and operates innovative products in the field of sustainable mobility.
Flow is the company behind the pioneering Flow SMM, an end-to-end sustainable mobility management solution that helps enterprises manage the transition of their fleets to low- or no-emission vehicles, while reducing overall fleet and energy costs. The SMM platform provides an integrated view of vehicle and energy data, enabling fleet and facilities managers to plan and operate a heterogeneous network of combustion and electric vehicles along with managing fuel and electricity consumption.
Flow SMM plans, manages, and maximizes sustainable use of more than 5,000 electric vehicles and 5,000 EV charging stations across Portugal.
Looking to consolidate market share and pursue new expansion objectives across Europe and the United States, the company needed an adequate cloud infrastructure that would support the collection, storage, and security of the real-time data gathered from electric vehicles via integrated IoT devices.
Flow also needed the high computing power, flexibility, and scalability offered by a modern cloud to run its Oracle Database, as well as cloud native and on-premises applications built with open source technology.
To manage the huge volume of data generated by IoT-connected devices from vehicle fleets, charging stations, and fuel sources, Flow needed a reliable cloud data center to simplify its operations and ensure cost predictability, while also enjoying consistent performance from its apps.
In addition, to run on-premises and cloud-native applications, Flow had to comply with European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) standards. This meant finding a cloud infrastructure provider with a global network of data centers that could store company and customer data in the European Union.
Why Flow Chose Oracle
Flow quickly recognized the opportunity for expansion by transitioning to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and its load balancing and logging capabilities. The company was especially eager to take advantage of Oracle’s Real Application Clusters.
Compared to open source solutions or competitors like Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, OCI offered a close partnership and a more resilient cloud platform that was easier to control and had a better price-performance ratio.
Results
After moving to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, the company took its Flow SMM solution to international markets by providing high performance, stability, and scalability.
Flow’s customers have saved more than €1 million in fleet costs and decreased the amount of carbon dioxide dispersed into the atmosphere by 5,000 tons in the past 12 months.
The move to an OCI data center has provided a more robust and scalable architecture, capable of managing tens of thousands of IoT-connected devices with reduced, predictable costs for data management. It also lowered the time to deploy application updates by close to 90%.
Transferring all workloads to OCI has allowed the company to scale up its application, making Flow SMM available to more devices and users at high performance.
Flow uses the Oracle data center in Frankfurt-on-the-Main in Germany to comply with GDPR regulations regarding storing personally identifiable information in Europe.
To meet plans for further international expansion, Flow aims to access more cost-saving technologies such as OCI’s data science and machine learning. It also hopes to deploy Oracle Analytics Cloud to offer customers new data-driven services.
Partners
Flow collaborated with Oracle Consulting to make the transition to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Within ten months, all of the company’s data and operational components had been moved to OCI. With Oracle Consulting’s assistance, Flow was able to focus on product optimizations instead of IT-related tasks. The company can now expand its scope of services without having to expand its team.