What if your utilities company could fix your hot water service before you knew it was broken, or introduced novel pricing models to improve global sustainability? Centrica, a global utility company with notable brands like British Gas, is a market leader in connected home products that help customers manage their energy use. With millions of customers and thousands of device installations a week, the business was outgrowing their on-premises data center despite ongoing investments, so they needed a reliable and elastic architecture that could quickly scale to meet demand. They also needed an agile and compliant IoT platform to manage the explosion of data resulting from more customers, more devices, and more sensors. With AWS IoT, they can focus on delivering better customer experiences while generating valuable business insights to optimize energy usage, reduce costs, and enable global sustainability. In this session, participants learn how Centrica seamlessly migrated to AWS IoT, and how they are modernizing their platform to deliver the future of energy.

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AWS re:INVENT
Delivering the Future of Energy with
Connected Home Products Using
AWS IoT
C L I C K T O A D D T E X T

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What to expect from this session
• Overview Centrica Connected Home/Hive
• How AWS services and AWS IoT Platform supports Centrica Connected Home development
• Architectural patterns for home automation

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Centrica Connected Home
A Brief History of Hive

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• Formed in 1812 in London, England
• The first public utility company in the world
• Serving around 12 million homes in the UK
• Provides service and repair via ”homecare”
making it one of the UK’s largest providers of
insurance products

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• Formed in 2012
• 15 employees
• Separate office location
• “Hive, A British Gas Innovation”
Centrica Connected Home

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• Launched October 2013
• Remote heating and hot water control via
web, smart phone or SMS control
• Installed by British Gas engineer
• Over 750,000 installations
Hive Active Heating

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• Launched in 2015
• Designed by Yves Bèhar
• Upgraded hub
• New features (Boost and Holiday Mode)
• Multizone support
• Acquired AlertMe
Hive Active Heating – Version 2

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• Smart plugs
• Contact sensors
• Motion sensors
• Recipes
• IFTTT partnership
Hive Active Heating – Additional Devices

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• Piece of Mind Boiler Cover
• Offered as part of our homecare product
• Uses the Hive platform, but can be installed
without having to purchase Hive Active
Heating
• Approx. 55% of BoilerIQ customers also have
Hive Active Heating
BoilerIQ

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• Dimmable white bulbs
• Dimmable colour bulbs
• Hive camera
• Alexa integration
• Leak/flow detection (part of British Gas’
Homecare product)
Hive Active Heating – Additional Devices

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• One of the largest connected home providers
in the UK
• Approx. 600 employees (and growing)
• £500 million of investment by 2020
• Offices in Houston (TX), London (England),
Cambridge (England) and Glasgow (Scotland)
Centrica Connected Home

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How AWS Have Helped Us Deliver

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• Bring a new, innovative product to market
• Disrupt the existing heating market
• Deliver to the highest standards
• With only 15 people
Challenge

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• First generation physical kit at hosting facility
in London
• Single site
• Required hardware upgrade at ~50,000 users
The Evolution of Hive

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Availability Zone
API
Instances
Customer
Data
Hub Control and
Communication
Device
Data
Temperature
Data
Auto Scaling
Group
Auto Scaling
Group
Classic Load
Balancer
Web and Mobile
Applications
Classic Load
Balancer
Hubs and
Devices
Availability Zone
Second Generation Platform in AWS
Device and
Firmware
Management
Auto Scaling
Group

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Availability Zone
API
Instances
Customer
Data
Hub Control and
Communication
Device
Data
Temperature
Data
Auto Scaling
Group
Auto Scaling
Group
Classic Load
Balancer
Web and Mobile
Applications
Classic Load
Balancer
Hubs and
Devices
Availability Zone
Second Generation Platform in AWS
Device and
Firmware
Management
Auto Scaling
Group

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The IoT Challenge
https
Messaging
Protocol
Low
Latency
High
Latency

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Availability Zone
API
Instances
Customer
Data
Device
Data
Temperature
Data
Auto Scaling
Group
Auto Scaling
Group
Classic Load
Balancer
Web and Mobile
Applications
Classic Load
Balancer
Hubs and
Devices
Availability Zone
Second Generation Platform in AWS
Device and
Firmware
Management
Auto Scaling
Group
Hub Control and
Communication

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Availability Zone
API
Instances
Customer
Data
Device
Data
Temperature
Data
Auto Scaling
Group
Auto Scaling
Group
Web and Mobile
Applications
Classic Load
Balancer
Hubs and
Devices
Availability Zone
Third Generation Platform in AWS
Device and
Firmware
Management
Auto Scaling
Group
Amazon API
Gateway
Hub Control and
Communication

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Availability Zone
Customer
Data
Device
Data
Temperature
Data
Auto Scaling
Group
Web and Mobile
Applications
Classic Load
Balancer
Hubs and
Devices
Availability Zone
Third Generation Platform in AWS
Device and
Firmware
Management
Auto Scaling
Group
/login API
/heating API
/security API
Amazon API
Gateway
Hub Control and
Communication

22. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Availability Zone
Device
Data
Temperature
Data
Auto Scaling
Group
Web and Mobile
Applications
Classic Load
Balancer
Hubs and
Devices
Availability Zone
Third Generation Platform in AWS
Device and
Firmware
Management
Auto Scaling
Group
Customer Data/login API
/heating API
/security API
Amazon API
Gateway
Hub Control and
Communication

23. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Availability Zone
Device
Data Auto Scaling
Group
Web and Mobile
Applications
Classic Load
Balancer
Hubs and
Devices
Availability Zone
Third Generation Platform in AWS
Device and
Firmware
Management
Auto Scaling
Group
Customer Data
Temperature Data
/login API
/heating API
/security API
Amazon API
Gateway
Hub Control and
Communication

24. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Availability Zone
Device
Data Auto Scaling
Group
Web and Mobile
Applications
Classic Load
Balancer
Hubs and
Devices
Availability Zone
Third Generation Platform in AWS
Device and
Firmware
Management
Auto Scaling
Group
Amazon API
Gateway
Customer Data
Temperature Data
/login API
/heating API
/security API
Hub Control and
Communication

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The IoT Challenge
https
Messaging
Protocol
Low
Latency
High
Latency

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• High round trip latency to query device in
home
• Single? Source of truth – device or cloud?
• Devices not always available
• Massive distributed scale
• Devices are only as clever as we make them
IoT Challenges

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• High round trip latency to query device in
home
• Single? Source of truth – device or cloud?
• Devices not always available
• Massive distributed scale
• Devices are only as clever as we make them
IoT Challenges

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Web and Mobile
Applications
Hubs and
Devices
Availability Zone
Third Generation Platform in AWS
Customer Data
Temperature Data
/login API
/heating API
/security API
Amazon
IoT
Amazon API
Gateway

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Insights

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• A customer with Hive gives a higher NPS
score than one without
• Higher retention rates and more upsell
opportunities
A Hive Customer Is a Happy Customer!

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• Temperature difference is more important
that absolute temperature
• Visual signs, such as snow, lead to customers
feeling the cold
• We can now manage our resources more
appropriately to the local conditions
Actual Temperature Is Not an Indicator of
Coldness!

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• We already know different buildings have
different thermal properties
• Hive allows us to measure this by looking at
the time taken for a property to reach its
target temperature
• We can identify efficiency opportunities for
our customers
• Ability to detect heating failure situations
Not All Properties Are Created Equal

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• Over 18% of BoilerIQ jobs fixed first time due
to correct identification of parts otherwise
not held in van stock
• 19% reduction in the need for an engineer to
visit property
• NPS for “new boiler” customers 21 points
higher for those with BoilerIQ
• Homecare churn drops by 2/3 for customers
with BoilerIQ
Insights, BoilerIQ

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AWS IoT for Connected Home

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Devices
Sense & Act
Cloud
Storage & Compute
Intelligence
Insights & Logic → Action
Three Pillars of IoT

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Devices
Sense & Act
Cloud
Storage & Compute
Intelligence
Insights & Logic → Action
• Securely connect at scale
• Ensure data is routed,
processed, and acted upon
• Applications to interact with
cars even when offline
• Fully integrate with other
AWS services
• Respond to local events
• Simplified device
programming
• Operate offline
• Secure communications
• Reduce the cost of running
IoT applications
Three Pillars of IoT
Analytics
Kinesis
EMR
Artificial Intelligence
Elastic Map Reduce
Machine Learning
Rekognition
Messaging
SQS
SNS
Database
Redshift
Management Tools
CloudWatch

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Devices
Sense & Act
Cloud
Storage & Compute
Intelligence
Insights & Logic → Action
• Securely connect at scale
• Ensure data is routed,
processed, and acted upon
• Applications to interact with
cars even when offline
• Fully integrate with other
AWS services
• Respond to local events
• Simplified device
programming
• Operate offline
• Secure communications
• Reduce the cost of running
IoT applications
Three Pillars of IoT
Analytics
Kinesis
EMR
Artificial Intelligence
Elastic Map Reduce
Machine Learning
Rekognition
Messaging
SQS
SNS
Database
Redshift
Management Tools
CloudWatch

38. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Devices
Sense & Act
Cloud
Storage & Compute
Intelligence
Insights & Logic → Action
• Securely connect at scale
• Ensure data is routed,
processed, and acted upon
• Applications to interact with
cars even when offline
• Fully integrate with other
AWS services
• Respond to local events
• Simplified device
programming
• Operate offline
• Secure communications
• Reduce the cost of running
IoT applications
Three pillars of IoT
Analytics
Kinesis
EMR
Artificial Intelligence
Elastic Map Reduce
Machine Learning
Rekognition
Messaging
SQS
SNS
Database
Redshift
Management Tools
CloudWatch

39. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
AWS IoT Platform
All in one service
• Message Broker
• Rules Engine
• Shadow
• Registry
Managed service
• No installation
• Automatic scaling
• No pre-provisioning
• Redundant across AZ
• Pay as you go

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Authentication and Authorization
Security is Job Zero
• Strong authentication
• Device policies
• IAM fine-grain access controls
• Auditing and logging

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Devices Shadows
Shadows
• States: Reported, Desired,
Timestamp
• Available all the time

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Device Gateway
Based on MQTT 3.1.1.1
• Native MQTT, MQTT+Websockets, HTTP
• QoS 0 & 1
• JSON format

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Rules Engine
Tasks
• SQL-like syntax to write rules
• Augment or filter data
• Save data to other services
• Send data to Amazon Machine Learning
• Make predictions based on ML model
Services Supported
• Amazon DynamoDB
• Amazon S3
• Amazon SNS
• Amazon SQS
• Amazon Kinesis
• Amazon Elasticsearch
• AWS Lambda
• and more...

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Registry
Manage Things
• Define and apply attributes
• Search for things
• Thing Types
Uses
• Inventory
• Categorization
• Thing Policy Variables

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Home Automation Architecture

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Connected Home Architecture Patterns
 AP1: Store device state and logic on gateway
 AP2: Scheduled telemetry batch upload to AWS
 AP3: Smart mobile apps directly connected to AWS IoT
 AP4: Activation of real-time streams on demand
 AP5: Location aware (home/internet) mobile apps
 AP6: Run ML models at edge
 AP7: Hub-less connect home setup

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Optimizing Home Automation Architecture
AP
1
AP
2
AP
3
AP
4
AP
5
AP
6
AP
7

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THANK YOU!
C L I C K T O A D D T E X T
C L I C K T O A D D T E X T