Element Blue partners with Ewing Irrigation to complete the Smarter Water Ecosystem

Element Blue, the leading provider of IBM’s Intelligent Operations for Water, today announced its partnership with Ewing Irrigation, an Arizona based wholesale distributor of water management solutions. The relationship will allow Element Blue to include Ewing products, services and instrumentation with its Smarter Water solutions for clients who may need these tools to effectively implement their water management initiatives.

“As our projects have begun to unfold across the United States, the need to partner with a solutions provider that specializes in “intelligence in the ground” was deemed paramount to successful deployment of many sustainability implementations,” said Steven Gerhardt, Element Blue CEO and Managing Partner. “We joined forces with Ewing Irrigation to ensure that data collected would not only save water and money, but also would promote better plant health as well as optimizing plant selection and hardscape designs.”

“Green spaces are vitally important for communities,” said Douglas W. York, Ewing’s Chief Executive Officer. “Our role is to lend our expertise in the area of practical water management and conservation to achieve the wise and responsible use of water on large scale projects.”

Using Element Blue’s SmartCloud solution, grounds operations managers gain insight into a variety of key data, including turf conditions, soil moisture, volume and frequency of watering, fertilizer applications, distribution costs, leak detection and monitoring, and weather forecasts.

The new partnership will engineer solutions “from the ground to the cloud” to deliver real time data for managing irrigation systems, monitoring exact water supplies and allocating water within microclimate conditions with unprecedented speed with the potential to increase overall water efficiency by 50%.

According to Gerhardt, Ewing plays a critical role in completing the Smarter Water Ecosystem in the following ways:

• Leveraging Ewing’s expansive network of vendor and technical expert relationships to identify site-specific landscape water management products and practices.
• Delivering qualified contractors to assess current water management, agronomic, and other landscape challenges in the interest of increasing water use efficiency while maintaining plant health and vigor
• Serving as an educator and resource for landscape contractors and on-site water managers in the development and execution of best management practices
• Promoting sustainability and achieving water efficiency goals through the strategic use of agronomic solutions and innovative technologies, including weather or sensor-based water management systems, efficient irrigation products and alternative water sources
• Managing the product inventory and delivery critical to on-time and on-budget success for multiple phase projects

“A well designed, analytics driven irrigation system can significantly reduce water waste by collecting and analyzing data about water transmission – how water flows, where it flows, how it’s used, how it’s lost and where it’s vulnerable to future losses,” said IBM Smarter Water Program Director Michael Sullivan. “The ability to monitor these systems in real time means that potential problems such as under or over watering, a burst pipe, a slow leak or a malfunctioning pump can be quickly identified and resolved – or even predicted and prevented.”

The additional value of the partnership is the implementation of IBM’s Intelligent Operations Center (IOC) for Smarter Cities, which enables clients to extend the platform to support a range of projects across the city, campus, municipality or within agencies and departments. City or campus leaders may integrate city and campus management of services such as public safety, transportation, water, building, revenue generation and energy management within the IOC.

About Element Blue 
Element Blue is a leading IBM Premier Partner creating software with an IBM technology advantage. The practice develops solutions through IBM SmartCloud – yielding a tremendous capital savings and long-term benefit for the transition of businesses to a more agile delivery platform. Element Blue is a provider of IBM’s Intelligent Operations Center (IOC), as well as IBM WebSphere® Portal, IBM Business Process Manager platform, and IBM SmartCloud™ solutions, and produces software solutions serving the Energy, Agriculture, Events, Government, Healthcare and Retail markets.

About Ewing Irrigation
Ewing is the largest family-owned supplier of landscape and water management products in the country. Ewing offers commercial and residential irrigation supplies, water management solutions, landscape and turf products, hardscape, landscape lighting, water features, erosion control, industry-leading seminars and more to professionals serving the landscaping, sports turf, golf, agricultural and industrial industries.

Contact Information
Steven Gerhardt
(832) 532-4056