"There is no life without water."

 - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Nobel Prize-winning biochemist

Municipal water utilities have one of the most important—and unappreciated—tasks in civilization. They bring water to citizens located far from rivers or streams; located instead in apartment buildings, houses and businesses along city streets and highways.

There is indeed, “no life without water.” But to be useful, that water has to be stored, distributed when needed, and contained. For most organizations today, whether commercial or municipal, there is no industrial life without data. But that data must be available, understandable and actionable. It’s amazing to learn that more than 50% of businesses (and this could include municipalities as well) have more data than they have the data analytics capacity to handle or analyze effectively.

When you’re watching a great movie it absorbs you into the story, the action and the characters. It's probably not a great movie if you find yourself thinking about other things like; “How did they get that camera angle?” Or “These are really strange sound effects" or even worse "Did I put the laundry in the dryer?" 

There’s a strong correlation between the movie production mechanics and your operations. On your computer or smart device, you want just to see the data from local and remote locations—production, measurements, down time, machine health, maintenance schedules, utility costs—or whatever, as long as it's data you can action upon to help you increase your production, safety, profits or sustainability. You don’t want to fumble around with reporting, why you’re not getting data from the sensors in the compressor, or what happened to last month’s figures. If your current system causes you to do that, you’re ready for a change.

When the real estate market is booming, home buyers will fight for virtually any house that hits the market. It's nice for sellers while it's happening, but eventually, the buyers who chose the best location will hold the properties with the greatest value. Of course there is much more to factor into your decision before committing yourself to a purchase that large; you probably have poured over the area data to see what the crime rate is, how the schools are, what the resale market holds, how far it is to conveniences, how close the neighbors are (or are not), etc...

Predicting long-term market value of anything isn't easy, but there are some tell-tale things to look for before you sign the dotted line that can help give you insight into the long-range value. The most important is of course all that data you can find today, on just about anything!

Trust can be a giant deal-breaker for any relationship. It doesn't matter if it's who should watch your dog when you go on vacation, who you should marry, who babysits your kids, or who you should trust your company data with; it matters big time to you because it impacts you as a person. Broken trust can quickly turn the relationship into something completely unrecognizable in a heartbeat.

A giant part of building trust with anyone is 'seeing' who they really are after you've known them a long time. A very wise person once told me "When someone shows you who they are, believe them."

We totally understand that addressing who you should entrust your data, SaaS and SCADA system to can be a very difficult decision, and one that should not be taken lightly.

One of the most exciting uses for cloud software, IIoT and automaton technology has been in the mining industry. In recent years the health and safety numbers for mining have greatly improved—and so have costs and efficiencies—by handing machines the dirtiest and most energy-intensive jobs. Mining companies and human health factors have both benefitted greatly.

The challenge, however, is that the machines also have health requirements. With few humans around to watch and listen, how does a mining company keep those big machines getting ores—and profits- to the surface?

Emerson Machine Health Monitoring helps right-time your preventive maintenance program and increase it's effectiveness

You've probably heard awesome stories of how truly great things can happen to people out of the blue; love when you least expect it, strangers paying for your coffee... The list goes on and on forever about how small, unexpected people and the actions they sometimes take can bring us light, love and unmeasurable positive impact to our lives.

Machines however, are not out to sweep us off our feet, cheer us up, or have any desire to pass along some sunny moments into our lives. No, they're famous for breaking down when we need them the MOST. Sometimes, it almost feels like maybe they even conspire together and to all have different (and very time consuming) breakdowns all within days, even hours of each other to cause total havoc on our work, and lives. The surprises machines can deliver don't exactly give anyone the warm fuzzies.

You may be frustrated with your company’s slow crawl instead of fast track into the digital age, and you've even tried a few pilot projects in a kind of siloed effort that never really provided you with any return. Maybe you tried some field automation, but then didn't have a perfected way to get that data to everyone who could greatly benefit from it; so it got you no where on your digital journey, and it didn't set you up to get budget approval for future projects you had in mind.

A recent McKinsey report says siloing—doing a little automation here and a little there—is a top frustration with forward-thinking executives. They’re looking to boost productivity in light of reduced workforces, but need some help to get a unified effort.

Over the past few years there has been an increase for packaging manufacturing all over the globe; many of us now order food to be delivered that comes in a special container to keep it warm (or cold). We order all sorts of things from Amazon, Lazada, Alibaba, or Otto; but it all comes in a special package to help it arrive safely in one piece, and the list goes on and on and continues to grow in popularity everyday.

But where does all that packaging come from to get us our goods in great condition without them looking like they were dragged through the mud?

This is where Packaging manufacturers come into the light; they create all the awesome packaging to be sure we get our orders in perfect condition; no matter what it is, or how far it traveled to get to us. These are the companies that make other companies shine since there is few other disappointments as receiving damaged goods as the end user/buyer.

You may be someone who already is aware that your data is best available to your employees on the cloud to continue to delivering stronger results. Everyone gets level-appropriate access during the day or at midnight, in the office or in Katmandu.

But with it that available, ‘How secure is it?’ you may want to know.

Instead of just saying, “Trust us,” we’ll share some of the extensive steps we take to make sure your data is very safe, both from intruders and from forces of nature. After all, we hold that data in trust for our customers and we don't take security lightly.