OTTAWA - The Continental Automated Buildings Association (CABA) and an alliance of leaders from the building automation, HVAC, security, information technology (IT), and facility management industries have announced efforts to create guidelines for sharing data and control across facility systems. These guidelines, called Open Building Information Xchange (oBIX), employ XML/Web services to enable open systems capabilities and enhanced operations.

The goal of the alliance is to develop oBIX guidelines to create a standard protocol for building systems. According to CABA, although not currently an industrywide standard, the efforts put forth by oBIX are designed to provide building professionals with such benefits as facility management and open systems integration based on IT standards.

"The knowledge and control oBIX puts in the hands of facility managers gives the oBIX guidelines the potential to become the standard of choice to unify operating data from diverse systems," said Ronald J. Zimmer, president and CEO of CABA.

Publication date: 01/12/2004