SteamaCo: Hybrid Team Scaling an IoT Energy Platform
Beetroot’s hybrid extension team of back-end and mobile specialists helped SteamaCo prepare its IoT smart metering platform to scale to 1 million devices, increasing development velocity by 25–30% and cutting security vulnerabilities by 50%.
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TECHNOLOGIES
- Python
- Django
- Rust
- AWS
- Kafka
- Elasticsearch
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TEAM COMPOSITION
- Back-end Engineers
- Mobile Developers
- 5 FTEs in total
Background
SteamaCo is an Anglo-African company transforming energy management in some of the world’s most challenging regions. Its IoT smart metering technology helps utilities across Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia tackle energy theft and high operational costs.
With smart meters and remote management, SteamaCo helps utilities deliver clean, reliable, and affordable energy, even in off-grid areas.
Project Recap
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SteamaCo needed scalable infrastructure, fresh technical expertise, and stronger security to support its growing IoT platform.
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A hybrid extension team of five back-end and mobile engineers joined SteamaCo’s team for two years.
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25–30% faster development, infrastructure ready for 1 million devices, and 50% fewer security vulnerabilities.
Challenge
SteamaCo planned to scale its infrastructure to support over 1 million connected devices, an ambitious goal that required significant back-end and mobile development expertise, and fast.
SteamaCo faced several challenges:
- Scaling the platform to a huge number of devices quickly
- Bringing in advanced back-end and mobile skills to speed up releases
- Integrating non-standard payment systems and smart meters with different protocols
- Strengthening security while keeping performance high
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Solution: Hybrid Extension Team for Scale, Speed, and Security
Beetroot assembled a hybrid extension team of five full-time engineers working primarily on back-end and mobile development. Over two years, the team worked closely with SteamaCo to prepare the platform for its growth plans.
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Stronger Python Back End
Deep Python and Django expertise improved the back-end architecture and scalability, while linters and package managers raised code quality.
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Rust for Performance
Introducing Rust significantly boosted back-end performance, letting the platform handle more concurrent operations.
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Fast Onboarding and CI/CD
The engineers joined SteamaCo’s team in just two weeks and set up CI/CD and automation for faster, more consistent delivery.
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Infrastructure for 1M Devices
Kafka handles real-time data streams and Elasticsearch improves data indexing for an infrastructure ready to scale.
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Payment and Meter Integrations
The team integrated a range of non-standard payment systems and new smart meter models from various manufacturers.
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Security and Cost Optimization
Industry-leading security practices, AWS optimization, and task automation improved compliance and reduced cloud costs.
Results
Over the two-year partnership, Beetroot’s remote dedicated team delivered tangible results across scalability, security, and operational efficiency.
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25–30% faster delivery
Development velocity grew, and deployment time dropped by 30%, speeding up time to market.
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Ready for 1M devices
The infrastructure scales to support up to 1 million devices with 99.9% uptime.
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30% faster queries
Real-time analysis of energy traffic now runs with minimal latency.
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Seamless integrations
95% success rate for non-standard payment integrations and 100% for smart meter integrations.
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50% fewer vulnerabilities
Security vulnerabilities were cut in half, with compliance with global security standards.
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Lower operating costs
AWS costs fell by 20%, and automation reduced manual workload by 40%.
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