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Intelligent Buildings

2018 BRINGS THE NEXT PHASE OF

BIG DATA FOR SMART BUILDINGS

would soon be integrating the whole data value chain and
moving towards more automation, data-driven decision
making and artificial intelligence (AI).

The past three years at IBcon have shown us increasing
ROB MURCHISON TOM SHIRCLIFF numbers of big data and analytics solutions leveraging
Intelligent Buildings Intelligent Buildings many front-of-house data sources, and this has ushered
in the era of the BIoT. With access to more and more BIoT
IN 2018, BIG DATA BUSINESS value will become a reality
for many more building owners. This year will rapidly con-
tinue a trend of stepping up a level from chasing systems
and features to focusing on enablement, catalysts, and
business value.

This pattern is welcome news and it is high time real
estate stakeholders stopped getting mired in conver-
sations about individual systems, algorithms, features,
and programming and started taking big data business
actions that scale across a portfolio. This behavior is
rooted in the basics of IT strategy, but, somehow the
industry got thrown off in the early stages of smart build-
ings and went chasing point solutions like the proverbial data sources, we have begun to see some of the first real
dog noticing a squirrel every few seconds. Big data is crit- integrations between BIoT solutions and the back office
ical to unlocking hidden operational inefficiencies, making (such as fault detection & diagnostics [FDD] and work order
better capital deployment decisions, better space utili- management). In this example, the FDD analytics finds
zation, optimal price points, better comfort, convenience a problem and then directly converts it to a work order,
and overall experience. This is accomplished through a including insightful contextual information such as location,
myriad of analytics and analysis that are not possible frequency, and device. This use-case shows us a preview of
without the reams of valuable data trapped in our sys- a what that full real estate technology value chain can look
tems, devices and computers. like and brings to life the vision Realcomm | IBcon has long
predicted for almost two decades. We have been in the early
Big data is not a new topic for us in the real estate indus- phases of this full technology value chain – but are now
try, but by most accounts, we have been late to the party poised to make significant progress as an industry.
for wide-spread adoption. From the earliest days of
Realcomm, we can recall it was all about the enablement Three focus areas will enable the industry to move into an
of the back office, with work order management, asset advanced stage of big data value creation in 2018:
management, broader IWMS, paperless transaction tools
and other software solutions. This movement formed the (1) Cybersecurity has become the new table stakes
original foundation of real estate big data, which even- for all big data and is also growing into a daily facility
tually led to the conversation about the need to harness operational requirement. The Cybersecurity chickens
the billions of big data ‘points’ available from the front of are coming home to roost in the real estate industry
the house such as controls systems, sensors, and mobile after decades of neglect. We have seen examples of
devices – all of which now comprise the Building Internet phishing attacks that ransom HVAC controls for bitcoin
of Things (BIoT). We then glimpsed a vision into how we in commercial office buildings, hospitals and schools;

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