Productivity and cost optimization, risk management, compliance, business continuity and sustainability are key objectives of corporations worldwide. Anand Mecheri, CMO of Siemens Building Technologies, examines the consequences of convergence of physical systems with IT and among safety, security and building management systems.
Solutions for safety, security and energy efficiency today are still largely implemented and managed separately. Over time, these solutions are expected to converge and interact with other business systems to deliver a value that is far greater than the functions they individually deliver.
Productivity and cost optimization, risk management, compliance, business continuity and sustainability are key objectives of corporations worldwide. Anand Mecheri, CMO of Siemens Building Technologies, examines the consequences of convergence of physical systems with IT and among safety, security and building management systems.
Solutions for safety, security and energy efficiency today are still largely implemented and managed separately. Over time, these solutions are expected to converge and interact with other business systems to deliver a value that is far greater than the functions they individually deliver.
Convergence started with building system backbones integrating into the IT infrastructure. But convergence is not just that. The end state with convergence will be when the customer has a seamless view of his business with collaboration among the underlying processes to achieve continuous improvements to productivity and reduction of costs and risks. There are several consequences for the industry.
Many of the control devices (the automation layer in a system) have evolved into generic IP edge devices running applications to manage building services.
● Open and standardized communication protocols between the control equipment and management stations over an IP network are becoming a reality.
● Management stations are increasingly open to interface with business systems using standard IT protocols such as LDAP, XML, TCP, HTTP and Web services.
● New services, such as hosted/remote access management, virtual guard tours, integrated mass notification and incident management, remote energy monitoring and remote services for building performance optimization, are all in some way driven or influenced by convergence.
CUSTOMER BENEFITS
Simplified system architectures would mean lower life cycle costs and TCO driven by backbone infrastructure, flexibility and investment protection. With standardization and eventually the potential to have vendorindependent control equipment under a common management system, the customer can upgrade the systems without ripping out everything. This was also the key value driver for the IT revolution in the 1990s.
The ability to leverage on remote services over the Web will be of great benefit for customers to obtain professional services without having to build up premisebased capability, which is more difficult and more expensive. The ability to seamlessly integrate building services with other business systems will open new capabilities hitherto not visualized in the areas of facility management, energy efficiency, energy management, convenience and enhanced security.