AutomatedBuildings.com Article - Are Automated Buildings Converging or Colliding

Is our industry listening to the wake up calls of the information revolution?

Ken Sinclair has been an Automation and Energy Consultant over 30 years, and has been extremely interested in the transition of direct digital control to web based presentation.

Preamble: Ken Sinclair, Editor and Owner of AutomatedBuildings.com prepared the following article, for the joint meeting of the Golden Gate and San Jose ASHRAE Chapters on Dec 2nd at the San Mateo Marriott. I welcome this opportunity to share my thoughts with the two ASHRAE chapters that carry on their business in the center of the Internet industry for America. These are exciting times and the exchange of concepts on how we are or are not converging with the information revolution will help us all better understand our position in this radical change in the way we do business. My understanding of convergence in the industry comes from reviewing over 200 industry web sites and editing and publishing articles. Please help me present the actual facts by sharing your views and/or late breaking concepts. Email sinclair@automatedbuildings.com or call 250-656-5378, Pacific Standard Time. Your input will be reflected in my presentation. It would be great if you could come out and join us at this ASHRAE joint chapter meeting. Contact the local chapters for details.

I am hoping that after the presentation a lively discussion from the floor will erupt on what works and what does not. I will try to keep us all focused on the topic of "What is Successful Convergence and What May Result in a Collision?

It is also timely that the November issue of our online Ezine "The Automator" has the theme "How the web is changing our industry". Several great industry articles on this subject are now on line.

The Internet is to the 21st Century what steam was to the 20th century. As steam led the way into the industrial revolution the Internet will lead the way into the information revolution. As the industrial revolution changed forever the way we work, the information revolution will change forever the way we think.

Changes occur in the Internet industry so quickly that the industry tends to look at a fiscal quarter as being equal to a net year, or four net years to a calendar year. This is because if you do your financial and business reviews at the conventional year-end you are seriously out of touch, plus likely out of business. I feel that this concept is significant in grasping the speed at which the information revolution is occurring. Yet our industry seems to still function in calendar years or slower, as the following issues were what I was talking about 5, 15, and 20 net years ago.

This talk concluded with the following summary. SO HERE IT IS - My prediction for the future is that we will see the separation of the vendors' involvement in the graphics and data presentation. Either Internet or Intranet type HTML multi platforms available anywhere presentation, will become the standard. This will allow the data to be easily organized into a common non-proprietary presentation application. We are presently working in this exciting area. Existing vendors will be required to concentrate their traditional hardware data into TCP IP protocol, to pass information to a dynamic Internet database. Virtual operating systems will allow control from any browser on the Internet or Intranet. As apparent seamless national and international automation occurs, companies will organize themselves by function, not geographically as they are now. DDC will be expanded into many non-traditional applications. Integration will occur on a non-proprietary level, and vendors will have trouble keeping up with hardware and installation demand for the new breed of system as the number of applications will greatly increase.

In closing, remember that I am the source of these predictions and ...Well... I... live on my little Island and I believe in Ferries. Although we have not yet completely achieved this prediction we are very close.

JUST A SPEC ON THE NET A project using the net as the vehicle to disseminate building automation specifications on the net. - Over 20 net years ago. "The Net" was chosen as the lowest cost, environmentally friendly method of disseminating the constantly changing information for their design consultants.

Yes convergence with the net is occurring in the automated building industry but at a rate much slower that the information revolution. Tight integration of automated buildings with Intranets and the Internet now is mandatory for our survival. If our industry does not provide this service others will.

Progress is occurring as several automation vendors are providing seamless linkage to the Intranet/Internet and the future. The methods of linkage are varied and depend greatly on the net readiness of vendors' products. Approaches today for net integration vary from using an Internet server as a building controller to building bridges to existing building automation controllers. Bridges are built in several net languages (CGI) Common Gateway Interface, Suns' JAVA, etc.

For those networks committed to Microsoft, Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) is being used by some vendors to pass information to web servers.

OLE (object linking and embedding) for Process Control (OPC) plus the COM (component object model) architecture, is rapidly being embraced as an industry standard.

The OPC Foundation Charter is to develop an open and interoperable interface standard, based upon the functional requirements of OLE/COM and DCOM technology, which fosters greater interoperability between automation/control applications, field systems/devices, and business/office applications. For more information check out their web site. http://www.opcfoundation.org/org.asp

One of the major problems is that net interface evolution is so rapid that investing in expensive software development in a non standard approach is risky. Industry standards and accepted procedures will greatly improve the speed of web interface evolution.

It is also interesting to note that convergence is also occurring in the major communication protocols such as Internet TCP/IP, Ethernet, and BACnet. Functionality and features are starting to show signs of sameness.

Several vendors use the tunneling concept to allow them to use their proprietary operating systems while using the Internet as a carrier only. Although this greatly increases the existing system functionality and flexibility the bridge to a web server is still required to provide easy public access and tight web integration.

Deregulation of energy is also fueling the rapid development of web based energy control systems. Our net savvy clients are redefining the definition of "ease of use" and "accessibility to information". Are we reacting quickly enough to provide solutions for our clients, or will the information revolution redefine how online global control is done?

The net has demonstrated how easy point and click can be used to access world data. This demonstration is seen by all and is putting pressure on our present poor performance of man machine interface. If the building automation industry does not address these issues the information revolutionaries will, and our market share will be lost.

The use of HTML and PDF formats for disseminating sales literature has exploded. The cost of printing, distributing, and updating glossy sales brochures is prohibitive. The net base solution offers many advantages, the most obvious being quick deployment of new product information. Most suppliers of products are using Adobe's Portable Document Format or PDF. This format requires that you purchase the software to print information to file format, but the software program to read and print to paper is provided free over the net. This marketing strategy has allowed Adobe to become a leader in the electronic deployment of information. A second important feature of this format is that PDF files can be launched from any browser that has the PDF plug in.

In the ASHRAE summer meeting Toronto presentation (over 5 net years ago) on using HTML as a Documentation Medium for Building O & M we had not yet seen wide usage and acceptance of PDF. An update of this presentation would include PDF because it allows closer control of screen display and printing. The fact that PDF interacts well with, and can be served by HTML, is part of its wide acceptance.

The evolution of requesting virtual documentation, and building virtual manuals with online connections has been slow. Most of the information that is assembled in paper manuals is first assembled in electronic format. A simple request in your mechanical specification can unlock the power of global search, net linking, etc. to simplify the complex data required for today's buildings. As a specifier today I would request that the complete O & M manual be provided in paper and in properly assembled and linked single PDF file that emulate the paper manual. Insure that search capabilities are enabled for the complete document. The PDF format allows the document to be used on a laptop directly with the PDF reader or to have the file served as part of a service Intranet. If you have large amounts of existing paper documentation you can go to a scanning service company and have the paper documents converted to PDF. I recently worked on a project where literally a room full of paper document reports was put on a laptop. This complete room of paper data was searchable on the laptop in PDF. With a little care, and being hard about what you want to see soft, you can make a significant difference.

It is clear that any new documentation format will require seamless interaction with HTML. The concept of the building address becoming the web site address such as the http://199fremont.com/ here in San Francisco, starts the mind churning as to the possibilities. Although building web address has been used to-date for marketing and general promotion, the further potential of obtaining complete automated building convergence very much excites me.

I would like to see a building with a web address such as this one explored to the fullest to see how far present convergence can go. Items should include at least the following:

We have the tools - let's show the world we can achieve total integration with our clients.

Some universities have achieved great inroads into presenting web based Internet/Intranet dynamic and static information. Often the information exists on internal or proprietary networks and even non-network based devices. Convergence of all this information into a net format that can be viewed by anyone with a net connection and a browser is demonstrated in several articles on our site. These concepts will change forever how we work and think.

Design build projects on the net allow everyone access almost simultaneously. Having a virtual post area or a virtual project manager to control posting of information allows quick communication of concept design changes. Take offs and pricing can occur rapidly. For more information review JUST A SPEC ON THE NET a Project using the net as a vehicle to disseminate building automation specifications on the net - Over 20 net years ago, is still in use today. I have seen few systems todate serving actual electronic specification documents like this.

Where are the elusive virtual or Intranet based light switches and thermostats? We also have several demos linked to our site as well as real articles about success stories.

1. Access to the medium. The average employee has better Internet access at home that he does at the office. It amazes me that companies are isolating their staff from the information revolution rather than embracing it. I am often instructed to email attached files for a version and graphic upgrades for a building automation system to the operator's home email account. This demonstrates to me a complete failure of the companies internal information systems. When Internet or even direct Intranet access is provided by a company it often has several functionality restrictions which renders it useless, and allows management to gloat that the information revolution is not here yet! When in history have we ever had better tools at home than in our workplaces?

2. The information technology departments of most companies are totally consumed with trying to bring their obsolete systems and networks into today's solutions. The Internet puppies have caught the old dogs in the information technology departments of most companies wallowing in a quagmire of bureaucracy. The "Information Prevention Department" as the Dilbert cartoons like to refer to them, are at a distinct disadvantage working with obsolete equipment and networks, but they are slow to abandon their past and embrace new ways. The net puppies have shown simple interfaces using the point and click solution to access extremely useful and interesting data from around the world to our personal PCs. Since most have better access to this information at home than they do in their office the pressure is being put on the old data dogs. Intranets provide the flexibility of the Internet in a company enterprise wide network that can be completely private. Rapid evolution toward Intranet solutions is occurring, sometimes led by the information departments and sometimes simply by the need to get on with the information revolution to stay competitive. Intranet development, because it uses all of the same components as the Internet, can be extremely quick and will likely provide the platform where most automated building data will flow.

3. Old papersauruses like us can kick the paper habit. Most of us grew up in a paper world. We think in two dimensions, 8 1/2 x 11. Will the data fit on one page or two? Internet pages are as long as you want. We can write our life history on one Internet page but that is not necessarily the best thing. We can enter into the third dimension and step through the page with an Internet concept called hyper-linking, which allows us to store data and links under each word. This concept allows us to read left to right to the edge of the net page for the length of the article, and when we want more information about a word we click through the page to another page or another world. Few of us old papersauruses have not yet completely grasped these concepts. This is how the new generation of net puppies thinks. If you think you can function well in the third dimension try playing a video game with these kids. Often the net is used to transfer paper. The page information is scanned into digital info, attached to an email, sent across the world and then converted back to paper in a printer. The fax machine set back our industry 10 years because it allowed us to continue our paper dependency. Had it not been invented we would have been forced to email and the power of attached files much earlier and evolution would be further advanced and the old papersauruses would have died. We have a few potential collisions to be aware of, and some rapid evolution to get on with, but there is nothing we cannot fix.

There is no question that Automated Buildings are converging with the Internet and we can fix our present collision courses, but our industry is at risk of losing our market share of the required net-based software development unless we start thinking and acting in net years not calendar years.

Ken has been an Automation and Energy Consultant over 30 years, and has been extremely interested in the transition of direct digital control to web based presentation. Frustrated by the organization of the industry material on the World Wide Web he created AutomatedBuilding.com as a web based resource and online electronic trade magazine for the Building Automation Industry. This forced a review of over 250 industry web sites. These sites vary in complexity from electronic posters without even an email address, to model sites with interactive training and product purchasing, glowing examples of e-commerce.

Ken is a founding member and past president of the local ASHRAE Chapter, a founding member and past president of the local AEE Chapter, and winner of the 1986 and 1989 ASHRAE International Energy Awards.

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