Transformative powers of IoT data mining for digital facilities

IoT Proliferation is Constant

By 2025, Business Insider forecasts there will be over 64 billion IoT devices in operation. In 2020, 90% of cars will be connected to the Internet. And by 2023, Ericsson Mobility Report puts Cellular IoT connectivity at 3.5 billion.

IoT–or the Internet of Things–is not one, isolated thing. It is a wide range of interrelated computing devices. It resides in your refrigerator, your phone, your thermostat, but also in mechanical and digital machines. With no humans or computers to mediate vast information floods, these devices continuously transfer data and information over networks.

Today’s commercial facilities and buildings use a combination of subsystems - all operating in autonomous silos. With IoT technology emergence challenging data collection and monitoring, enterprise facility operators and owners have a great opportunity to reap greater outcomes by integrating new technological advances, like IoT devices, into their current systems. Enterprises can gain heightened benefits if they leverage across multiple ecosystems within the infrastructure and tap into data from multiple trades.

Once this is achieved, then the systems working in unison can simplify O+M over the life cycle of the facility and drastically lower capital expenditures while at the same time increase technological services within a commercial facility. 

Don’t Ignore Valuable IoT Data

According to Cisco, by 2021 the flood of IoT generated data will reach 850 zettabytes. But only enterprises using tools to collect, organize, and deliver the data generated from IoT connectivity can reap actionable analytics and make sound business decisions.

But what’s missing from legacy Industrial IoT, BMS, SCADA, and monitoring solutions is the capability to collect and normalize data across large geographical footprints in a simple and scalable fashion. For multi-site commercial facility owners needing to capture untapped IoT and facility data from distributed sites and IoT devices, this is critical.

A network of sensory devices plays a pivotal role in data collection from building management systems and individual control solutions. From lighting fixtures to you HVAC and security, the sensory devices offer critical data valuable to other trades. And when viewed together, enterprises can gain insight into their collective operations.

IoT Platforms’ Critical Role

Automated, digitized facilities are the future of our facilities’ world. Maintaining market competitiveness and profitability requires facility owners and operators to harness valuable, critical and actionable data from all their IoT devices.

The IT market’s solution for collecting diverse data at a massive scale is the easy to install IoT platforms. These extract data from various in-building protocols and subsystems by using a nimble setup and an EDGE appliance wired to a port. IoT platforms’ open communications with a cloud infrastructure allow for remote management, provisioning, and monitoring. With no need for designated on-site staff, facility IT operators enjoy time and cost savings while gaining efficient, cost-effective operations.

Commercial building and facilities’ operators and managers deploying IoT platforms are free of costly on-site commissioning of monitoring systems and gain a single pane of glass approach to all their edge subsystems and technology. Operators have access to a single source of truth of data on a portfolio for analytics, alarming, AI, reporting, or custom applications from an easy to access cloud location.

With today’s enterprise infrastructure bombarded with multiple subsystems, and with an increased number of IoT sensing devices and other technologies, facility operators can use an IoT platform to leverage data between diverse systems. This means they can eliminate duplications since one sensor actually provides all the data without a separate monitoring system, wiring or programming.

Once all the data is collected across multiple sites, and stored in the cloud, facility operators can easily leverage the value of all their aggregated data using Micro-service Analytics and visualization engines. The organized data-lakes, provided by the IoT platform, easily transform the data into context-specific outcomes and actionable recommendations allowing operators to reap the ROIs of the IoT platform. This includes using available real estate space for additional revenues, traffic patterns for supply chain, to reducing energy use – all gained via the IoT platform layered atop existing and siloed systems enhancing the performance competency of the silos.

Leveraging and storing all the relevant data, collected from various sources, allows for a consolidated “truth” for outcome-based analytics tailored to specific business objectives.

IoT platforms maintain a transformative pulse of facilities technologies and operations, providing facility data for a greater purpose-generating meaningful outcomes, beyond just the physical building operations. By aggregating valuable, and previously inaccessible information, facility operators are empowered with improved bottom line and more efficient management and operations of multi-sites armed with analytics and visualization.