Emnotion Ltd.

To launch its worldwide business, Emnotion Ltd. needed reliable, cost-efficient access to accurate, timely weather data for any location in the world.

The company quickly deployed hyperlocal monitoring and forecasting services, capitalizing on raw climate data from The Weather Company, delivered on IBM Cloud.

Despite arid conditions and water shortages, agriculture thrives in Israel. The country produces most of its own food supplies and exports fresh produce and flowers globally. It also has provided the world with many farming innovations, including drought-resistant seeds and drip irrigation systems, which efficiently deliver water to plants at their base.

The Israeli government promotes water efficiency by requiring farmers to sign multiyear contracts for drip-irrigated water. To help ensure profitable yields, farmers must carefully forecast each crop’s water requirements over the course of several years. However, increasingly unpredictable weather patterns often turn planning into a guessing game that can lower yields while driving insurance and other operational costs higher. For example, if farmers contract for water at low-flow drip rates and their region subsequently experiences exceptional heat and drought, crops can fail to thrive and even wither and die. Other variables tied to weather, such as greenhouse heating costs and consumer demand, also affect farmers’ yields and profits.

The cofounders of Emnotion — Ilya Shapira, Chief Executive Officer, and Alexander Zogas, Chief Technology Officer — sought to help farmers plan with more foresight by launching cloud-based hyperlocal climate-forecasting services. They also wanted to help other types of enterprises that require climate data relevant to very specific areas, such as construction companies that must secure tower cranes during strong winds. Government entities and businesses that operate drones in cities also require information about wind conditions. “Winds behave in a very unpredictable ways in the city, and they can differ from street to street and block to block,” explains Shapira, emphasizing that with the right climate data turbulent conditions can be predicted.

To develop and deploy its services, Emnotion sought a weather service provider that could deliver affordable, consistently accurate data for any location in the world, whether a farm field, construction site or city district. As a cloud-native startup, it also sought a provider with an open, high-performance cloud infrastructure designed for security.

Teaming with The Weather Company, Emnotion launched its innovative climate-forecasting services within six months, taking advantage of hybrid cloud computing to minimize capital and operational costs. Tapping into IBM’s global weather network and cloud capabilities, the business also achieved a rapid ROI, quickly scaling to bring new customers online. It currently helps businesses and organizations in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Eastern Europe, Israel and New Zealand.

Customers appreciate Emnotion’s streamlined service delivery and the fact that they do not have to worry about hardware and IoT devices. Recently, for example, Emnotion brought an international development team in Turkmenistan online within two days, without requiring an employee to visit the country. The IBM name and reputation also helps Emnotion find and earn the respect of potential customers.

With its cloud-native business up and running, the company continues to receive excellent around-the-clock service from IBM. “We haven’t needed to call on any of IBM’s support services. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen very often with providers, but with IBM everything just works,” says Shapira.

Given increasingly unpredictable weather patterns and events, the company plans to continue helping enterprises across industries and continents optimize planning, reduce costs and risks, and increase profitability. It also is developing services specifically for the elderly and other people susceptible to temperature extremes, drops in barometric pressures, air pollution and other environmental conditions. “Once you have good, stable weather data and know how to work with it, you can make a lot of good things happen,” Shapira explains.

Founded in 2016, Emnotion (link resides outside of ibm.com) provides hyperlocal climate-forecasting solutions for customers in multiple industries, with a focus on agriculture, construction and government. Its innovative analytics and methodology enable it to create accurate behavior models, map climate change dynamics, and generate event scenarios for specific farms, districts, towns and regions. It employs four people at its offices in Rehovot, Israel.

About The Weather Company, an IBM Business

The Weather Company, an IBM Business, helps people make informed decisions and take action in the face of weather. The company offers the most accurate (PDF resides outside of ibm.com) forecasts globally with personalized and actionable weather data and insights to millions of consumers, marketers and businesses through its business solutions division and its own digital products from The Weather Channel [weather.com (link resides outside of ibm.com)] and Weather Underground [wunderground.com (link resides outside of ibm.com)]. A global AI and Cloud company, IBM is the largest technology and innovation employer in the world and serves clients in 170 countries. For more about IBM’s Weather business, visit newsroom.ibm.com/the-weather-company.