Proactive Connectivity for Water Treatment Systems
Founded in 1992, Tower Water began as a cooling tower cleaning company. Shortly after being founded, Russell Baskin brought his 10 years of experience in the water treatment field and created their Service Department. In 1996, Baskin created the Water System Construction Consulting Department, which revolutionized the chemical cleaning marketplace by creating and refining the equipment that is used to perform the work. With their vast experience and knowledge in the New York metro area, Tower Water has been able to grow from a 2-person business into a 43-employee organization.
After trying to manage their own connectivity, Tower Water ran into issues with inconsistent signal, a need for constant IT support, and an overall difficulty with managing their locations. Tower Water turned to OptConnect in January 2022 and now utilizes the OptConnect mylo dura, an LTE Cat M1 industrial router fully supported by both Verizon and AT&T.
Tower Water now has a connectivity system that has proven to be reliable and has addressed their connectivity problems.
About Tower Water
Tower Water is a premier provider of water treatment. They offer solutions for any water treatment needed by property managers, as well as solutions for pharmaceutical, educational, and light industrial facilities. Tower Water focuses on solving problems, not selling products. They provide a personal, team approach to every assignment. The team includes the company’s owners who are fully involved and work regularly with the entire Tower Water team. The entire operation is positive, cohesive, and highly advantageous to clients.
“The Tower Water Client comes first in our company because they are the reason we are here,” said Thomas Hardy, Director of Service at Tower Water. “We strive to inform and educate them about their water treatment plan to ensure they understand everything that we do. By remaining flexible and working around our client’s schedule, and by maintaining a meaningful, close relationship, we allow the client to rely on us and trust our forward-thinking methods. Clients are the most valuable part of our organization.”
Their Need
Proper water treatment is crucial to reduce corrosion, scale and fouling, and to maintain the designed longevity and efficiency of your system. These treatments will provide a direct return on investment in water, energy, and manpower costs, and will protect your system from expensive repairs and early replacement. Water treatment is also critical in protecting individuals from harmful waterborne disease. An integral part of water treatment systems working efficiently is the reliability of their connectivity.
After trying to manage their own connectivity, Tower Water realized they needed a more robust connectivity solution. “Prior to using the mylo dura with OptConnect, we were using a system designed and managed by Tower Water,” said Hardy. “Our previous solution was difficult to manage as some location’s signals were not as available as we have had with the mylo dura. Connectivity was inconsistent and required on site IT support.”
"OptConnect has saved us time and expense in servicing the client that could not previously be reached in times of need. The need to reset connectivity options has been reduced considerably and the uptime has provided us more confidence in remotely servicing our clients within a 24-hour window."
Thomas Hardy
Director of Service at Tower Water
The Solution
Tower Water utilizes the mylo dura for their range of locations, an industrial router built specifically for machine-to-machine (M2M) applications. When compared to standard 4G devices, mylo dura has superior building penetration strength, works further from cell towers and performs better in crowded and congested environments. The mylo dura is activated on both Verizon and AT&T networks – two networks on a single device with a single all-inclusive bill. This means that if one network goes down, mylo dura automatically switches carrier networks guaranteeing your equipment stays connected.
OptConnect mylo dura also comes in a rugged aircraft grade aluminum case for better protection. The aluminum casing has an increased temperature rating for industrial applications. The standard 35mm DIN rail bracket makes mounting a snap inside your enclosure. OptConnect mylo dura comes standard with an IP69 waterproof, dust-proof direct mount external antenna, as well as an IP67 rated AC 18-24V, DC 8-40V power supply. Optionally, a magnetic mount antenna and 5VDC power supply are available for ease of installation in all deployments.
OptConnect Summit
Every OptConnect device comes with full access to our robust monitoring platform, Summit. In addition to utilizing the mylo dura, Tower Water also frequently uses Summit to check device health including check ins and any device interruptions. Summit enables OptConnect’s customers to have access to their wireless portfolio wherever they go. This platform allows customers to conveniently view and manage their devices from your phone, tablet, or computer. OptConnect also works to consistently improve the Summit platform, recently releasing a large platform update to better support the ever-evolving needs of their customers.
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A Look at Summit 3.0
"Our customers operate in a myriad of business verticals, have different business models, and utilize varying processes and procedures best suited to them. Because of that, we wanted the primary page in Summit from which they manage the connectivity of their devices to be just as diverse. That is why for this round of updates we focused on the search functionality and diverse views.”
John Toone
Program and Development Manager at OptConnect
Working with Tower Water
Tower Water intends to continue their growth in their current market and wants to extend their market into new geographic locations. “As we continue our growth, we are considering remoting into facilities with more regularity and more services as we know connections are more reliable,” said Hardy. “As we grow and scale, we look forward to continuing to use OptConnect for our connectivity needs. The reliability, security, and support are unparalleled.”
Justin Nichols, National Sales Executive at OptConnect, said that working with Tower Water has been a highly impactful partnership for both companies. “The partnership between Tower Water and OptConnect is truly a partnership,” said Nichols. “It combines the strengths of two of the leading enterprises in their respective spaces to provide the best experience for our shared customers. Working with Thomas and the rest of the Tower Water team has been a breeze to quickly upgrade their connectivity strategy. It is no wonder that they are one of the most respected names in the industry and continue to innovate and provide the latest cutting edge technology and services.”
"I recommend OptConnect to multiple peers focusing on customer service, competitive pricing structure, equipment reliability, and monitoring software. They have been great to work with and continue to provide reliable connectivity.”
Thomas Hardy
Director of Service at Tower Water
Wastewater and Water Treatment Connectivity
In today’s challenging environment, OptConnect understands that reliability is a top priority for Wastewater and Water Treatment equipment. These are mission critical technologies that can quickly become a costly service call if they go down. Connecting your treatment systems to the internet to be able to proactively monitor and control equipment from a remote platform increases efficiencies for OEM’s and Operators. Providing an end-to-end connected solution helps reduce operating costs and labor, will allow service providers the ability to operate more treatment plants with less overhead and greater efficiency, improve quality control and system analytics, as well as prolong life expectancy of aging infrastructure.
Without a reliable connectivity solution, the smartest controllers and equipment fail to work as designed and none of the benefits anticipated are realized. OptConnect provides "Connectivity-as-a-Service" so you can focus on your core business and leave the complexity of connecting your equipment to the internet to our team of experts.