Differentiated Services - Networks and Smart Buildings
We don’t view differentiation as a building type or location, but rather by specific expertise that can be applied to the project. Ward has relentlessly searched out niches of knowledge and services where we have few competitors. We are comfortable competing with one or two similar companies, but if we are considered a commodity and the client sees 5 or 6 competitors as equal, we are most likely not going to win work, except for one thing – price. We don’t want to be selected for price. If the only benefit that we offer is price, we have failed to convey our message to the client. In fact, we want to be at a different price point than others, because we can do things better or faster or differently that will save time and effort at the client. This takes salesmanship and positioning.
It is the art of promoting the “USP”, the Unique Selling Proposition. This term includes a key word Unique, in that there is only one of it, and we have that one thing. I don’t see differentiation by location, building sector or by client type, but by service offering differentiation.
Network Design – somewhat different from our competitors, but very different in relation to the second skill, which is Network Integration. Although our competitors can draw a simple network of switches that will work, we provide deep network re-design and transition services that are fairly unique. For instance, we wrote the complex RFP for the replacement of all pieces of a large network at an operating airport, without impacting any air or ground operations. This requires deep knowledge of many aspects of networking that you can’t read in a cut-sheet. It is important to highlight these skills in proposals.
Network Integration – very different from competitors. We get into the deep IP networking issues related to establishing literally hundreds of VLAN’s, segregating networks, and describing metrics for high availability and high reliability for many different network flows. We have even branched out into software defined networking. A typical five star hotel network that we work on has over 300 different VLAN’s, including one for each hotel room. We have now moved into the world of Software Defined Networking (SDN), where controller servers are directing the traffic on the network. This is what we are using in our Network upgrade for the Kingston Jamaica airport.
We also need to brief our clients on the latest developments in Networking such as Shortest Path Bridging (SPB), Transparent Interconnections of Lots of Links (TRILL), VXLan’s and Spine/Leaf architectures. I often say that the biggest configuration problem for networks is Spanning Tree. Both SPB and TRILL were developed to eliminate Spanning Tree shortcomings, but very few building service Engineers know these issues.
Smart Buildings – somewhat different to our competitors. We don’t really like this phrase as it is so meaningless and dead. A real estate professional in Hong Kong once told me that the definition of a smart building was one that is fully leased, because if it’s not fully leased, it's a dumb building. At least he knew the name as something related to a BENEFIT, which is important. This phrase should really be more benefit oriented, like Clean Building or Safe Building or Friendly Building or Efficient Building or Attractive Building or Inexpensive Building. Nobody really knows what a Smart Building is, so that allows people like Cisco to define it as a big network filled with Cisco hardware or Honeywell to define it as lots of BACNET devices interconnected with Honeywell devices or Lutron to define it as lots of lighting keypads, dimmers and Eco-lume ballasts.
Another marketing term “Internet of Things (IoT)” has often been co-opted to add even more murkiness to the Smart Building fog. We see these two phrases bandied about like they are going to save the world from climate change or cure bad breath.
Part of Ward’s job is to define the parameters, limits and capabilities of the “Interactive Building”, as a simulacrum of the Smart Building. What Ward has been doing for the last five or more years, is the practice of providing core network components and software to provide Converged networks where all data, voice, video, TV, audio, radio and security services are aggregated together onto one fat backbone network. Think of the Smart Building as really being a small version of the internet inside the building. There is a big difference however on the software integration side.
To understand this, I will need to stretch the Freeway analogy a bit. Our converged data network is a big multilane freeway with on and off-ramps and multi-level overpasses, but it is empty of vehicles. Onto the freeway comes a taxi, where the driver only speaks German. Onto the freeway comes a truck, where the driver only speaks Italian. Onto the freeway comes a stream of cars, where the drivers only speak Japanese. The drivers all know the rules of the road and they can understand the icon based signs on the freeway, so they all know how to get from their source to their destination and they don’t crash into each other (rarely). These vehicles are data types on the network. Those data types all co-exist happily on the network as long as the freeway doesn’t get congested and come to a traffic jam, which can happen in data networks just like on the freeway. Network routers are the signs and traffic cops that direct the vehicles so that they get to their destination in a somewhat deterministic fashion. However, the vehicles drivers (data packets) cannot communicate to the other vehicles drivers as they don’t understand each other’s language. So let’s say that a Japanese speaking driver needs to communicate with the truck driver who only speaks Italian, as he can see that part of the trucks load is about to fall onto the highway and cause a big accident. He could honk and wave, but the truck driver might not get the message. He needs a translator and a communication path to the truck driver, but he only needs the translator for the important small bits of information that he needs to get to the Truck driver - “Your load is falling off!!!” This is where the services of a MiddleWare integration platform come into play. This is a piece of semi-custom software (and hardware interfaces) on the network that is listening to all of the traffic on the network. This Integration platform ignores 99.9% of the traffic as it is only listening for traffic that is meant to “translate” from one system to another, or where one system is requesting another system to do something or to report something. Since the different systems don't speak the same language this intermediary integration platform does the language (protocol) conversion and passes the message to the destination system.
In the case of our Five Star Hotel projects, this integration platform is the Premises Management System (PMS), often Opera Fidelio, based on an Oracle database. The PMS acts as a host for the various application modules, written by the equipment suppliers. There are literally thousands of integrations in the Opera ecosystem, so that a Johnson BMS can talk to a Sonifi IPTV system, via the PMS. A guest can use the TV remote to access an on-screen menu on their TV’s to change the temperature in the room. However, for commercial buildings without a PMS, we need to use another method and that is through an integration broker or Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), like Tridium Niagara Frameworks, Connexal or Entelec Sky-Walker.
Although these products appear to be off-the-self solutions, in reality they are really automation programming and hardware environments that require extensive amount of software programming expertise. Ward is the freeway builder, but he doesn’t do the detailed ESB configuration and programming.. One would still need to hire a controls expert to get this functionality. Building integration is NOT just a Division 25 BAS specification.
IPTV Network Design – Really this is an offshoot of the Network Integration items above. On the networking side, it is fairly straightforward; however on the graphical user interface and service offering description, this gets quite involved on the software description and software feature side. We now have to include guest direct connection to TV’s through Airplay, Chromecast or Miracast. These often require customized versions of residential services.
SMATV System Design – very different from our competitors. This can be part of the IPTV design or it can be quite separate, especially when dealing with multiple sat dishes and aggregating multiple satellite beams into an overall channel offering. This can be distribution over IPTV as noted above or via digital QAM on coaxial cable.
This is a rather arcane corner of the Telecom/TV industry, but Ward has over 30 years’ experience of this dating back to the mid 1980’s. An understanding of digital video broadcasting formats for various countries and also understanding of Sat dish transponder and sat dish low-noise electronics is key.
Although many consulting and engineering firms just pick a manufacturer in this field and let them ‘design’ it, we don’t feel that this provides any value to the client. We will research all of the available specialist vendors who have products exactly suitable to the client’s requirements and then assemble drawings and an RFP that is truly competitive. For the Skorpios project we pre-approved vendors from Scotland, Portugal and Athens, with two alternates from London and Spain.
We also do a totally unique site plan review where we look down on the site from the Geostationary satellite locations, using 3D AutoCAD, and evaluate that the line-of-sight is free from obstructions. Sometimes the multiple dishes can occult each other – we take this into account in the 3D model.