AutomatedBuildings.com Editorial

In our education sessions in New York one clear component of every successful energy integration project was a team of champions who asserted ownership of the project's collaboratory.

Another observation was that the projects were truly morphing into a dynamic collection of people, things, and internet interactions; a collaboratory not just a project.

“a collaboratory" is more than an elaborate collection of information and communications technologies; it is a new networked organizational form that also includes social processes; collaboration techniques; formal and informal communication; and agreement on norms, principles, values, and rules” (Cogburn, 2003, p. 86).

Hence it became obvious that the theme of our March issue should be the issue on everyone's mind, the "Ownership of the Collaboratory". The importance of keeping our data free inside the collaboratory was also highlighted; a lesson we learned in the past but somehow have to keep relearning over and over. The data not only needs to be free it needs to be named and organized in a predicable agreed on format.

In Jim Young's article BIoT – BUILDING Internet of Things™ he provides a great graphic (be sure to click on it to enlarge so you can see the many details) that shows some of the components of the collaboratory of the BIoT. Inside the "O" in the background letters I B c o n which is his next Realcomm event in Las Vegas, are these words "Scalable / Robust Time Series Database Business Rules Engine" Why are these words inside the "O"?

Does the encasing "O" stand for Ownership? Open? Opportunity? or all of these? or simply the second letter of Conference and let's just talk about it?

A cloud data collection platform. As a platform, its key feature is simply to provide the infrastructure for people to start pushing HVAC and any other building data into the cloud.

Connecting commercial buildings into the cloud is still something which must be championed by ambitious and technically savvy people who are acting in the interest of the building owner - mainly consultants or switched-on real estate managers, who have a good grasp of what they want to use the software tools for. There are definitely some very good software packages in the market right now, but they are selling themselves as exactly that, a one-size-fits-all package. Once you buy in, you’re seemingly locked in, which is ironic since the software world is supposed to be all about freedom of choice.

Why do we need to own our collaboratory and its database? Because we have no idea of how we will use our data. Trust me on this, did anyone have any idea how smart phone apps would redefine our lives by using existing data to locate us on google maps etc. Shared ownership is something we cannot avoid because data is used by many for different reasons. The most obvious shared relationship for us is utility data. I believe shared ownership is workable as long as we understand the rules of who owns what and how we both can use it.

The point I am trying to make is the cloud is being populated by others for their purposes with our data and we need to assume ownership or at least understand the how and why of that. We also need to understand how this data will be kept safe and secure with our freedom of access for purposes we have not yet defined.

The March issue speaks in many articles, columns, and interviews to the complexities of the rapidly evolving collaboratory. Networks appear out of thin air and are being linked seamlessly to the cloud. Hardware evolution is morphing to IP devices that are able to bring existing wired based standards such as BACnet, Lon, and other's easily into the cloud. Cloud generic web service interfaces like oBIX, Haystack, and OSCRE are rapidly evolving to help guide conversion, interaction and naming of our real time data to a useful format for use by all in the owned Database. New technologies like LED lighting are bringing their own flavour of IP networks and ask the question;

Will the confluence of the Internet, Wireless Technology and LED Lighting create the perfect storm that opens up the opportunity for the Internet of Things (IoT) to rapidly establish itself in buildings?

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