Adoption of Internet Standards Gives Birth to a New Industry in Building Automation Systems

The adoption of Internet Standards in the Building Automation Systems (BAS) market is giving birth to a new industry focusing on information management and analysis. The worldwide market for BAS is expected to grow at a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of nearly 5 percent over the next five years. The market was nearly $22 billion in 2004 and is forecasted to exceed $25 billion in 2009.

In sharp contrast to traditional BAS protocols, the adoption of Internet standards allows building owners to perform sophisticated business intelligence analysis on facilities data that is typically reserved for business applications. Recognizing the emerging demand for Internet standards in the BAS market, IT companies such as Cisco are taking greater interest in partnering with suppliers already active in the BAS controls market. At the same time, traditional BAS suppliers are looking for help in providing high-level facilities data analysis tools to a new breed of customers in the increasingly IP-centric BAS market.

Internet Standards Are Necessary to Drive Productivity Gains

It is increasingly evident that adoption of Internet standards in the BAS market is necessary to drive further productivity gains of both employees and facilities equipment. Businesses are increasingly transitioning toward dynamic, demand-driven models that require increased agility, flexibility, and productivity to be responsive to ever faster market changes.

Business agility, however, demands a level of data visibility and sharing that is not present in the infrastructure of most businesses today. Most businesses have an extensive installed base of disparate equipment and systems that are unable to coexist on a single network including IT systems, BAS, and numerous building devices. These systems and devices were implemented using a variety of suppliers with different needs in mind. Most systems and equipment, and the applications that run on them, were implemented using a wide range of methodologies, languages, protocols, operating systems, and platforms, with no consideration of ever trying to bring disparate systems together, yet represent huge investments that cannot be discarded. Over time, businesses accumulate numerous different generations of legacy systems and equipment. Consequently, most solutions designed to allow disparate building systems to share data across a common network require significant time and investment to complete the necessary custom integration or replacement programs.

Use of Internet standards helps achieve interoperability by simplifying and reducing the risk associated with exchanging data across various networks and systems.

The adoption of Internet communication standards in the BAS market is further extending the concept of smart buildings by allowing companies to create a single repository for all facilities data so that it can be easily retrieved and shared between all applications and all organizations within an enterprise. Once facilities data is easily retrieved, companies are able to perform intelligent analysis on the enterprise's entire portfolio of facilities data. In addition to providing enhanced data integration, the ability to work with numerous types of equipment and systems from numerous vendors using Internet standards is also key to providing facilities managers reduced uncertainty by removing the fear of the solution becoming obsolete due to the rapidly changing landscape of the controls market with new vendors and new technologies appearing on the market almost daily.

Internet Standards in the Building Automation Systems (BAS) Publ 20060314