The concept of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has existed for some time in the IT world. Service Oriented Architecture is defined as a system's architectural style for creating and using business processes, packaged as services, through their lifecycle. As IT spending grows even larger for new building construction, we will see SOA entering the building space with great vigor.
With the number of discrete low voltage systems and disparate data sub-systems growing in any facility today, it's not a giant leap to say that these systems should be connected via the network to allow communication and distill and prioritize notifications coming.
Architectural and Engineering design firms that are looking to stay competitive and remain in the game will find it necessary to change to a service oriented model. Specifying product will slowly erode and where, in the past, they were finding it difficult to find the right product vendors and installation teams to work in concert with electrical and mechanical trades, they will find the help of a technology trade more critical than ever before.
This shift will be an enabler to distribute SOA applications for the environment that encapsulate not only specialty systems, but security, HVAC, and other typical building systems.
This combination of services affords safety, obsolescence proofing, feature-teaming among existing legacy systems. The building will now do more than it ever could - on it's own: producing root cause analysis and statistical data based upon any parameter that the system interfaces to.
This brings up a concept my friend Jeff discusses frequently - Outcomes vs. Outputs. More on that later.
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