Honeywell rolls out Attune cloud computing service for building automation systems
April 19, 2012
Honeywell International Inc. (NYSE: HON) recently announced a set of services in which it uses its own computer hardware to remotely monitor customers’ meters and analyze buildings’ use of gas, steam and electricity.
Attune Advisory Services, introduced in March by Morris, New Jersey-based Honeywell, includes software that collects information from utility meters, and is also designed to provide insight on building performance and identify opportunities to cut energy costs.
It uses technology from E-Mon LLC, a Langhorne, Pennsylvania submeter manufacturer that Honeywell acquired in July, 2010…
“We then take meter data from either that modbus meter or maybe one that the customer has already installed. We bring that back over either the customer’s existing (local-area network) environment or we install a separate (third or fourth-generation) cellular wireless connection on our private communications cloud that brings the data back,” said Greg Turner, director of global offerings for Honeywell Building Solutions.
Cloud computing is a term information technology vendors use to describe a service whereby one organization uses another’s computer servers to store or process their data.
With its roots in Minneapolis-based furnace regulator and heat generator makers, Honeywell is now a $36 billion manufacturer of a plethora of technologies, including fire protection, security, ballistic protection material for helmets and aerospace components it inherited from the 1993 merger with AlliedSignal and building automation systems. Its Automation and Control Solutions business group includes heating and heating processes, ventilation, cooling and refrigeration, air filtration, zoning, humidification, water controls lighting control, buildings controls, switches, sensors and controllers.
Honeywell Attune has four different services. Attune Energy Awareness lets facility managers access and monitor electricity and natural gas consumption. With Attune Energy Improvement, Honeywell experts send facility managers reports that provide information on efficiency and recommendations on upgrades and replacements.
Attune Energy Optimization gathers systems data and assesses performance using fault detection and diagnostics. It’s suited for facilities spending more than $200,00 a year on energy, Turner said, adding it communicates using different protocols including Modbus and Bacnet.
“A few customers have had the luxury of building architecture over time but most have two or three generations of systems and sometimes three, four or five different providers,” he said.
“If we’ve got a system on the customer site that’s capable of aggregating the data from all the different sub systems, we can then connect that to our optimize solution in the cloud.”
Attune Operations Services provides equipment monitoring and responds to alarms.
Data analytics is becoming more important in improving energy efficiency, said Cason Talon, a research analyst with IDC Energy Insights, a Framingham, Massachusetts provider of research reports and custom consulting services.
“The convergence of information technology and building automation is a trend that’s coming, but how that plays out is going to be very different, based on building size and business segment,” she said. “It’s a really active market.”
Talon wrote the recently-published Smart Buildings Maturity Model, available for purchase on the IDC website.
She noted that in addition to Honeywell Attune, Johnson Controls Inc. (NYSE:JCI) introduced Panoptix and Schneider Electric SA (EPA:SU) of Rueil-Malmaison, France is also in the market.
Panoptix, introduced last October, is a cloud computing service designed to collect and manage data from disparate building systems and other data sources, such as meter and weather data.
“Decision managers are realizing there’s real opportunity to cut costs, and increasing energy efficiency and operational efficiency will not only help promote the goals of corporate responsibility or sustainability but will really help manage costs and due to economic constraints, the parallel benefits are really valuable,” Talon said in an interview.