BOULDER, Colo. — Technologies that make buildings smarter and more energy efficient continue to evolve at a rapid pace. Many of the new products and services center on the data that buildings produce in real time. Buildings have been producing volumes of data for many years, but today, according to a new white paper from Pike Research, many companies are starting to leverage the cloud as the basis for software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings.

Virtually every leading name in the building services industry has recently launched some form of building energy management system that hosts and manages building data in the cloud, the firm finds.

“Buildings are becoming smarter through the deployment of intelligent and energy efficient technologies that reduce energy consumption while making buildings easier to manage and operate,” said senior analyst Eric Bloom. “In addition, advances in software for building energy management systems (BEMS) as well as for building design (through building information modeling or BIM) are making it easier to design and maintain high performance buildings. Going forward, many of these advances will find their way to the cloud, making them more accessible over a broader range of applications and geographies.”

Key smart building industry trends, according to Pike Research, include:

• Building energy management is reaching the cloud.

• Co-opetition is on the rise in the building industry.

• Targeted acquisitions will help key players deliver end-to-end monetized energy services.

• U.S. energy service companies are turning to the federal sector.

• Building communication protocols are converging in more ways than one.

• Demand response (DR) is shifting into automatic.

• Submeters are finding new opportunities in smarter buildings.

• Building information modeling is transforming the design process.

• The interface between smart buildings and the smart grid is blurring.

Publication date: 6/18/2012