Digital transformation drives Aegea expansion, improving communication, security, and a new reality for data analytics in Azure

Founded in 2010, Aegea is the leader in the private sanitation sector in Brazil and operates through its concessionaires in 13 states from north to south of the country. Currently, the company is present in 154 municipalities, benefiting more than 21 million people. Its trajectory is based on operational efficiency, achievement of goals, responsible investments and alignment with ESG principles.

Recently, the company won public bids that led it to practically double the size of its operation and, with such expansion, sought to further strengthen efficiency. Realizing technology as a key part of this process, Aegea approached Microsoft for solutions that could support its growth and as a trusted partner for this transformation.

Cloud tools empowering communication and strengthening security

By the end of 2020, aiming to properly promote remote work for its employees, Aegea took the first steps in its digital transformation with the implementation – in two weeks – of Microsoft 365, enabling Microsoft Teams for approximately 3,000 company users.

Eduardo Araújo Portes, IT infrastructure and security manager at Aegea, explains that the implementation was a success. In a short time, the rapid expansion of the company motivated another important step and, in mid-2021, it sought to expand the number of users and functionalities of the solution.

"First, it was necessary to support the home office, but we had a big usage jump with the company's growth, which almost doubled in 2021. Microsoft supported us, we chose two licenses for security, and we made a more comprehensive contract," he explains.

Aegea has implemented O365 E1 and E3, M365 E3 (Security Solutions) and F1 (for Field personnel) licenses to enhance collaboration by bringing Microsoft Teams to the entire company, in addition to security features. Azure Active Directory Premium and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) provided this support for information storage and authentication of users working remotely without risk.

"We were able to increase the number of users and a great benefit in terms of security was the authentication of applications through the cloud environment," adds Eduardo.

Another step for Aegea was the migration from SAP to Azure, which took place in 2021. The company had a legacy environment since 2017, when the SAP S4 Hana was implemented in an on-premises structure, which was designed to serve the company for five years, that is, until the beginning of 2022. In addition to the infrastructure endpoint, the company was to grow abruptly (more than 50%) with the entry of new units. With this scenario, a replacement evaluation and design of legacy hardware and an environment to support all this growth in a short period of time was then initiated.

Following the completion of the study, Aegea chose to migrate its entire SAP infrastructure to Azure, a process that took approximately four months and allowed the company to be adequately prepared for the entry of new businesses, such as the Águas do Rio public service provider, in 2021.

Data Lake on Azure, new tools, AI and IoT

In parallel, the company began working on a journey to democratize data and foster a data-driven culture. The first step was the migration from data lake to Azure.

"Bringing together information from across Brazil into a single database was a major challenge. We now have a single repository for the company to become digital and data-driven, with new tools and flexibility to expand processing," says Heribert Vicente Bastos, Data Architecture and Analytics Manager.

The next step was to work with modern cloud tools. This was the case of the "Real Estate Detector," in which AI analyzes satellite images to find and quantify real estate in certain regions, analyzing the registration situation and noting whether or not there is a sewage collection network.

The project recorded 24,500 detected images and over 110,000 downloaded images, fulfilling its goal of increasing revenue with viable and potential and cadastral correction.

"At first it was an algorithmic process, then we brought Custom Vision (Azure Cognitive Services), where the accuracy of recognition increases, which generated a lot of improvement. We can identify real estate near our unregistered network, which strengthens our business," Heribert says. Azure Synapse Analytics also integrates the solution's intelligence layer.

With data lake, cloud and AI tools in place, the Aegea team begins exploring new possibilities that technology offers to boost business. Among them, a project still in the initial phase of the progress of analyzing audio and text news to identify feelings, locations and people that may affect the company's operations and image.

With all this in place, Aegea is also developing an IoT (Internet of Things) solution, with sensors and other tools to analyze water pressure, as well as information on calls and more data to cross-reference the volume of information to help the company make decisions, including identifying areas in need of basic sanitation.

A solution that allows you to think ahead 

On the data-driven culture side, the next step is to expand the use of new technologies. "The demands for working with data appear in different areas of the company, and we have several initiatives underway. Integration within the platform was very important, and we have flexibility to extend processing, with new information and adding new users," Heribert says.

On the infrastructure side, the next step is the implementation of Microsoft Intune and Microsoft Defender. Both are part of the E3 license, to provide more security for the company, its employees and consumers. In addition, Power Apps, a set of low-code solutions, is also integrated into this solution and has been used in some internal initiatives of the company.

Aegea built a modern and secure environment for all its users, empowered its internal communication with Microsoft Teams, and brought layers of security as well. With Azure, it has achieved flexibility and robustness for more agile processing and has also realized a sophisticated data journey, becoming a proactive and advanced company that makes decisions through insights.

"The partnership with Microsoft has been very positive, both in terms of tools and technical support. The technology is new, but the solutions have a quick learning curve. There is even a lot of material to learn from," he concludes.