The manufacturers and suppliers of technical services in commercial and industrial buildings have deployed web-enabled technology, smart systems and sensors, and integration across the different services as part of their solutions for some 25 years under a banner of “Intelligent Buildings,” “Smart Buildings,” or “Building Automation.” Now they have adopted a new term called the Building Internet of Things (BIoT) to describe their future solutions. Building owners and facility managers are left wondering if this is really different and whether it can deliver against their value propositions. They are, not surprisingly, cautious because they have invested heavily over the last 25 years in smart buildings, and few have realised the benefits promised. The problem is that they have been locked into proprietary systems that lacked robustness and were expensive to operate and difficult to scale up once installed. Smart buildings have evolved painfully and slowly over the last two decades, but at last we are […]