Saturday, January 21, 2006
What's happening 01/21/2006
Building Automation: HP And Cisco Sign In
Deep lake water cooling
Big Chill - An ambitious new project uses lake water to cool off city slickers
Future PC's
Deep lake water cooling
Big Chill - An ambitious new project uses lake water to cool off city slickers
Future PC's
Thursday, January 19, 2006
AHR EXPO opens next Monday
The web site home page has a script busy loading and changing banners. I wonder how much every blink earns.
Booth #3532 is shared by 12 Bacnet venders. And they will connect and integrate each other's controllers into their own front-ends over Bacnet/IP. Similar thing has been done in Bacnet Conference and Expo 2005.
I can't make it. My plan is to check the exhibitor list and product locator, and have fun in a hard way.
Booth #3532 is shared by 12 Bacnet venders. And they will connect and integrate each other's controllers into their own front-ends over Bacnet/IP. Similar thing has been done in Bacnet Conference and Expo 2005.
I can't make it. My plan is to check the exhibitor list and product locator, and have fun in a hard way.
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Invensys Building Systems to go franchise
The title of this news is about expanding, but the story is telling the shrinking.
With a network of Independent Field Offices, IBS is cutting its project delivery force and put the limited resource on R&D(?) and manufacturing. But I am still questioning about the loyralty of the "Independent Field Offices", which are actually dealers. I see more and more dealers adopt "best of breed"method, i.e., to give up the exclusive dealership and mix controllers from different manufacturers, based on the controller prices and engineering costs, in projects.
With a network of Independent Field Offices, IBS is cutting its project delivery force and put the limited resource on R&D(?) and manufacturing. But I am still questioning about the loyralty of the "Independent Field Offices", which are actually dealers. I see more and more dealers adopt "best of breed"method, i.e., to give up the exclusive dealership and mix controllers from different manufacturers, based on the controller prices and engineering costs, in projects.
Friday, January 06, 2006
huMan to Machine & Machine to Machine
The key to Tridium's growth is "anything to internet". Followed that, Echelon came up with iLon and Bacnet brought out Bacnet/IP.
Tridium's main goal is M2M market, which furthers the above idea. People predict that in the future, there will be more machine to machine communication than human to machine on networks including Internet. And that's why Tridium joined Honeywell. Honeywell has a deep pocket to support Tridium's ambition.
However, M2M is a little far away from BA industry. And I think the distance in between is the human to machine interface. With more and more devices support web interface. The operators should not be locked at the PC. Using generic wireless web-supported personal electronics such as PDA, cell phone and more fancy stuffs like all-in-1-card and e-paper, the BA system can be accessed anywhere in the building. I'll call these as pervasive interfaces.
With pervasive interfaces, M2M sets the foothold in BA systems. Site devices can send real time and historical data to remote servers through M2M technology. We don't need PC on site for system persentation and historical data storage anymore. Operators log on the system provider's portal web server and check the building conditions. The service provider maintains the system at back stage. The BA system can be accessed anywhere even thoudsands miles away from the building.
I'll explorer more of this in latter posts.
Tridium's main goal is M2M market, which furthers the above idea. People predict that in the future, there will be more machine to machine communication than human to machine on networks including Internet. And that's why Tridium joined Honeywell. Honeywell has a deep pocket to support Tridium's ambition.
However, M2M is a little far away from BA industry. And I think the distance in between is the human to machine interface. With more and more devices support web interface. The operators should not be locked at the PC. Using generic wireless web-supported personal electronics such as PDA, cell phone and more fancy stuffs like all-in-1-card and e-paper, the BA system can be accessed anywhere in the building. I'll call these as pervasive interfaces.
With pervasive interfaces, M2M sets the foothold in BA systems. Site devices can send real time and historical data to remote servers through M2M technology. We don't need PC on site for system persentation and historical data storage anymore. Operators log on the system provider's portal web server and check the building conditions. The service provider maintains the system at back stage. The BA system can be accessed anywhere even thoudsands miles away from the building.
I'll explorer more of this in latter posts.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Schneider and TAC
A lot of BA acquistions and mergers happened in last 2 years.
Other than the cases I mentioned previously, Schneider Electric has been played actively. After Schneider gobbled up TAC in 2003 and Andover Controls in 2004, the new TAC formed in April, 2005, with estimated 2004 revenes of 0.7B.
Along with some lightweight acquisitions in consulting engineering and security/fire businesses, TAC took over almost all the building automation business of Invensys in Europe and Middle East in June, 2005. By the way, Invensys is a company in controls and automation industry who suffered a lot from its acquistion & merger failures. Here are some details.
Another notable Schneider's acquistion is Canadian based company Power Measurement (not throught TAC) in April, 2005.
Other than the cases I mentioned previously, Schneider Electric has been played actively. After Schneider gobbled up TAC in 2003 and Andover Controls in 2004, the new TAC formed in April, 2005, with estimated 2004 revenes of 0.7B.
Along with some lightweight acquisitions in consulting engineering and security/fire businesses, TAC took over almost all the building automation business of Invensys in Europe and Middle East in June, 2005. By the way, Invensys is a company in controls and automation industry who suffered a lot from its acquistion & merger failures. Here are some details.
Another notable Schneider's acquistion is Canadian based company Power Measurement (not throught TAC) in April, 2005.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Here comes the new year
Steve Jobs asked a question to John Sculley, "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you wnat to change the world?" Although, over years, this may have became a cliche because Apple guys used it again and again to the people they want. But it is still powerful if you ask yourself once a year.... in the first 3 years?
