Chris DeBenedictis Budderfly LL

Chris DeBenedictis, Vice President of Technology in Budderfly LLC

Budderfly, the revolutionary firm in saving energy

Budderfly provides its customers with guaranteed energy savings through its Energy-Efficiency-asa-Service solution (EEaaS). The company helps customers be more energy efficient, while they harness the highest savings solutions.

In addition, Budderfly provides technology and innovation solutions to reduce energy usage and pollution, to deliver savings from day one. It also helps its customers in completely removing all the complexity and financial hurdles of a project to ensure its success.

With no cost to its customers, Budderfly implements proprietary energy intelligence software, energy efficiency upgrades such as LED lights, HVAC controls, variable frequency drives, refrigeration controls, among others. Budderfly creates networks of patented Internet of Things (IoT) devices that monitor and report on all elements of energy usage.

As a result, Budderfly is able to optimize energy usage at the point of consumption within each facility across the enterprise. In an exclusive interview with Energy Capital, Chris DeBenedictis, Vice President of Technology in Budderfly LLC, talked about the matter.

In this conversation, the Vice President explained the Budderfly experience in partnering with Amazon Web Services (AWS), and how Cloud Computing Services, such as the one AWS provides, is a great opportunity for energy management and efficiency companies to leverage. BUDDERFLY IMPLEMENTS PROPRIETARY ENERGY INTELLIGENCE SOFTWARE, ENERGY EFFICIENCY UPGRADES SUCH AS LED LIGHTS, HVAC CONTROLS, VARIABLE FREQUENCY DRIVES, REFRIGERATION CONTROLS, AMONG OTHERS.

From Budderfly’s Vice President point of view, the energy management industry is changing. In other words, the energy industry is increasingly shifting the conversation from cost savings to sustainability.

DeBenedictis considers two important points about the change in energy management. Firstly, cost savings has long been a tremendous opportunity for many organizations because there are energysaving technologies that can save money for companies. However, companies have begun to consider sustainability as a key issue.

And secondly, he thinks that there is an increase in the sense of corporate responsibility. A lot of large organizations are making announcements about going carbon-free, like the quick serve restaurants. But customers now are looking for companies that are on the forefront of sustainability. Chris DeBenedictis mentioned that organizations, like Just Salad, which is one of Budderfly’s customers, have been on that forefront of sustainability. Both in terms of energy, but also in terms of sustainably sourcing their products, minimizing use of plastic utensils. Additionally, he expressed that: “It really comes down to the

corporate responsibility, as well as a message that just resonates with their customers”.

In addition, Budderfly partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to provide cloud-based data collection and analytic services for its Budderfly EnergyCloud™ solution. In this regard, Chris DeBenedictis thinks that there are many benefits of choosing a cloud computing route, when looking to enhance the Internet of Things (IoT) and energy management infrastructure.

Budderfly and Amazon Web Services have been partners for about four years now. During the first year, Amazon started with an AWS PRO server engagement to help Budderfly get their infrastructure off the ground. Since then, trained staff have helped to implement the Budderfly program.

At Budderfly, they have recognized that security is of paramount importance for any infrastructure, particularly with IoT device networks. So, the Vice President said that “one of the benefits that Butterfly got from partnering with Amazon is all their extensive experience and products around security, like their web application Firewall and GuardDuty”.

Furthermore, Budderfly's partnership with Amazon provided the company with an AWS infrastructure, which it didn't have to build itself. “And that brings with it cost savings in terms of equipment costs, hosting costs, and also staffing costs,” Chris DeBenedictis remarked.

Chris DeBenedictis explained the way that AWS helped Butterfly better manage its IoT devices. First, each connected device is equipped with a unique Budderfly IoT sensor that securely passes information to the AWS IoT cloud using AWS Greengrass and AWS FreeRTOS.

Consequently, AWS IoT Greengrass is an open-source edge run-time and cloud service that helps you build, deploy, and manage intelligent device software. AWS help customers better understand and optimize their energy consumption. The Vice President mentioned that: “It all really comes back to the time to market and

“ONE OF THE BENEFITS THAT BUTTERFLY GOT FROM PARTNERING WITH AMAZON IS ALL THEIR EXTENSIVE EXPERIENCE AND PRODUCTS AROUND SECURITY, LIKE THEIR WEB APPLICATION FIREWALL AND GUARDDUTY”.

CHRIS DEBENEDICTIS.

the cost savings that the AWS infrastructure brings to the table”.

Moreover, AWS Greengrass allows the equipment to act in real-time on Budderfly’s data; which is generated in proprietary devices. So, AWS Greengrass executes predictions based on machine learning models and pre-set power circuit (load) filters.

Additionally, the Vice President thinks that AWS services have been very beneficial for Budderfly. Whenever the company has a problem it needs to solve, the first thing it does is turn to the AWS collection of offerings.

In this sense, Amazon offers a large catalog of solutions. Starting with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), and Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). The company has expanded its use of AWS technology to create richer clinical tools and pursue advanced data science approaches.

In reality, Budderfly's spending on AWS has meant a return on investment and operational expenditure (OPEX), rather than capital expenditures (CAPEX). “Our AWS subscription is just an operational expense that we manage monthly,” he said.

In previous deployments and in other organizations that Chris DeBenedictis worked with, when the company had its own hosting facilities, it had to buy its own hardware and software. All of that represented a CAPEX expense and it was a difficult time-consuming process, he explained.

In contrast, AWS allows Budderfly to log in and enable new services. From the perspective of the Vice President: “It’s a luxury to just focus on what BUDDERFLY PARTNERED WITH AMAZON WEB SERVICES (AWS) TO PROVIDE CLOUD-BASED DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYTICS SERVICES FOR ITS BUDDERFLY ENERGYCLOUD™ SOLUTION.

Budderfly does best, building the software for energy management”. Therefore, AWS represents a return on investment for the company.

In the same way, DeBenedictis thinks that “the benefit of the Cloud Computing Services is in that ability to scale as your business grows and as your data needs to grow”. That means companies must capture data on energy management.

In order to be the highest company in energy management, you need to capture granular data minute level. To achieve this, “you need an infrastructure capable of actually ingesting, curating, making available for reporting, and for business intelligence,” he said. Then, the Cloud Computing Services Works to bring that important information to the customers.

Finally, Chris DeBenedictis invites readers to move towards Cloud, in order to be more efficient. “We have found with our partnership with AWS is that it really relieves so much of the pressure that you have to manage your ecosystem. And this is really just lets you focus on what your business does best,” he concluded.