IBC are pleased to share a new partnership with EasyIO by Johnson Controls. The products EasyIO offer are disruptors in the market, offering Irish Companies another choice in Building Management Systems with the comfort that it is backed by the support of a Blue-chip company like Johnson Controls.Think beyond with EasyIO and IBC. For information on EasyIO, and for pricing, talk with IBC today sales@ibc.ie +353 1 457 5421. This post is available as a word doc here.
A Short Introduction to EasyIO
EasyIO is generating a unique relationship with the industry due to our ability to provide solutions for all built environment projects; whether building from new, looking at developing advanced refurbishment and replacement strategies on legacy systems, and of course in the key area of smart building integration, IoT and Big Data demands. As a 100% IP/Ethernet based controller provider we are ideally placed to forge the integration of the future today and this is being recognised by some global clients and major systems integrators across Europe. Importantly we are helping our clients step out from the legacy world associated to the BMS industry and bringing the building asset into the middle of IoT strategies, ensuring that the built environment is fully integrated into the digitisation process from here onwards.
A key element of our approach to business is the EasyIO extended community including the solutions partners we work with, the consultants we support to deliver the right solutions to those most demanding projects, and the end clients that we help to understand the art of the possible rather than accepting average. If you and your organisation want to stand out, want to create a competitive edge versus the organisations in your region that are remaining static in their development, want to be more profitable and successful, and most importantly want to challenge yourselves to be at the front of your market then EasyIO is a partner of choice for you.
As we see the market develop at a rapid pace to a new approach to enterprise management solutions, EasyIO with our controls range and our software solutions allow you to design the right solution with the right cost for all environments and integrate to both existing and new leading edge BMS head ends and platforms, plus to cloud based analytics solutions and web interfaces. Dependent on the design approach you want to take whether you are working in the IoT environment and want to port data to cloud based platforms or are taking a traditional BMS head end approach EasyIO lead the way in getting you where you want to be.
EasyIO Think Beyond
EasyIO is seen as a market disruptor following some major high profile end client systems awards across the Globe, and we have been asked many times what makes us different, what is behind this reputation and why in an industry not known for its forward thinking what is it that we are doing that pushes the industry forward. Is this because the market is static or that we are genuinely looking to push the boundaries of a stagnant market sector, where new market entrants from alternative industries want more and see EasyIO as the only option to delivering a solution set that suits their demands?
It is in fact a balance of all of this, and whilst we haven’t historically managed to formerly state our claim to the disruptor title, by clarifying in our own mind our story then we realise that our goals from the very start have had an impact on an industry that has struggled to move at the pace of the demand for change, improvement and technological advances.
Our belief is that the market is starting to turn, and we will stand up to our responsibility to make that happen and be at the forefront of delivering the solutions that the industry needs to provide. We will continue to bridge to the past and present and deliver integrated solutions today that enable the future and support the advanced strategies around digitisation and getting the most out of the Worlds building stock.
The History of EasyIO
The EasyIO story starts in 2000 when Mike Marston set up a company to choose to make a difference, set out a plan to help an industry deliver solutions to the problems they had been surrounded by for many years. In 2001 Gordan Chan joined Mike to enhance the vision and embed an ethos of delivering answers to those problems that made sense for the long term, not just putting a plaster over the problem and taking the easy road and protecting revenues from long ago developed products and systems, but decided to plan out a future and set off on the hardest road of all.
From the outset the founding members of the company set out on a path that would potentially put them at odds with the market that they wished to serve, and in order to achieve transformation of a market they would focus on some strategic areas to ensure their goals could be achieved. The first thing they decided to do was make sure that every employee they took on understood the challenge, took on the role of market stimulators and put together a charter of behaviours that brought the next wave of inspired and inspiring personnel to the company, including Johan Schakenraad (owner and CEO) in Europe, and Lim Hoon Chiat as the CTO.
EasyIO often talk about the fact “The Rules Have Changed”, have we specifically changed them, well yes and no, but we are certain we are now starting to push the change to a real movement of advancement, and that the Rules are very different and continue to transform. The original goals of the founding members, the rules or the bible as such, stand today:
- Demystify the dark art – the mystical world of BMS, the idea of a black box in the building needs dispelling and EasyIO will make our technology accessible, easy to work with, training will be accessible and of the right quality, and engineering solutions will permit repeatable quality and standardisation where needed. Clients don’t want their buildings to have closed technology and restricted access to the right support skills, technology needs to be open, accessible and pervasive. Added to this EasyIO not only ensures all solutions we develop are intuitive, innovative, but deliver 100% the desired output
- Provide solutions to problems – we will always talk to our customers, partners and clients to understand what journey they want to go on, whether this is around integrating to cloud technologies or wanting to utilise our solutions for applications that haven’t been considered before. We develop solutions in record speed and have delivered new products and solutions to market consistently over our history, this is the drive of our CTO to constantly develop and be different to the rest of the market
- Cost effective, easy to use, more understandable – the goal of the business is delivering the right cost for technology with no tie ins or long term revenue costs, and then through the combined impact of our improved engineering tools and our inclusive technology approach we are easier to design, install, support
- Simplify to deliver efficiency, flexibility, repeatability – take the combined experiences of our team with 100’s of years in the industry to deliver high quality consistently for every environment
- Lead in technology – blend the best of all worlds, IT, BMS, Software, IoT to bring the best future proofed solutions to the market
- BE BETTER THAN THE REST – employ the best from a variety of industries, motivate the industry to change, work with market leading companies, influencers and people accepting of change as a core philosophy, drive for excellence every day and be open to change and supporting our customers and the industry better than any of our competitors
EasyIO Driving the Future
How does EasyIO look at the future, where do we see this world of ours travelling to and what part will we take in pushing the industry to deliver the demands of the customers at all levels of the supply chain?
The demand is here and now for solutions that supply a platform for integration, permitting technologies from multiple arenas to come together whether IT, IoT, whether building technology or cloud computing technology, the building and the technology that supports it can no longer be a proprietary zone, an island requiring specialist skills that are costly and in short supply. EasyIO have been bridging that gap for a number of years with developed and proven technology and solutions that are accessible and integrated at all levels. We play our part in delivering solutions today that permit security of investment and allow the art of the possible to be redefined.
EasyIO believes that every building can be adapted easily and cost effectively to deliver the occupants assured outcomes whether on Wellbeing performance, energy use effectiveness, accessibility and of course in terms of flexibility of the building to adapt with time in design with change of use or style of occupation. So whether trying to fit new strategies onto existing buildings or designing new buildings the key goals have to be underpinned by the technology that we put in place, and then we provide the tools to adapt, change and fine tune through platforms and solutions that give clear visibility of ongoing performance with data visibility and analytical tools in place to support the ability to flex and flow with constantly changing demands.
With the ocean of data that will come from buildings it is imperative that the BMS industry learns to adapt to the constantly developing IT standards to ensure security of the systems and solutions is proven and impenetrable. Our industry demands in delivering, storing, analysing this data is clear and a fundamental part of our DNA. EasyIO drives the standard for utilising MQTT in our solution sets and bring all the IT standards required for connectivity and security into our individual products, including VPN, 802.1x, WPA for WiFi, independently tested and proven.
Our exposure to the market helps us understand the trends of the market; end clients, significant property owners, FM organisations and key integrators are all looking to change the model of how they deliver services to their buildings. A future where clients and partners own their own data, can access it easily, use that data for best effect, ensure they get the most from their building assets, can use data to redefine the quality of service they get from their suppliers, automate and use Machine Learning and AI for the best effect, and most importantly do this within the right cost and revenue model is a reality. Is it that the day of ongoing licencing, the day of BMS head ends, the day of annual SaaS fees is coming to an end, well watch this space as licence free solutions in this space are the future.
Our Philosophy and Beliefs
In order to continue to play our role in development of the market we must continue to live behind our ethos, develop and ensure our philosophy and drive matches our goals.
To BE THE BEST we need to constantly adapt, support our growth by attracting the next wave of innovators, integrators, solution developers and search the associated markets for the people who will help in developing our vision and have the passion to make change and deliver solutions to the market that make the leap from isolated excellence to consistent quality of fully integrated solutions.
EasyIO has a goal to continue to strive to help the end client market understand what the actual cost of the technology they wish to implement is rather than conform to the market and competitor norms, and take holistic approaches to cost that incorporate design, installation and ongoing support efficiencies as well.
Finally we take our responsibilities to change the mould very seriously indeed, whether we are developing solutions to meet a new application, delivering support on our products and solutions already in the market, helping our consultants and end client contacts understand how to specify the right solution, training the next wave of industry specialists or bringing new technology to the existing engineering personnel.
Why are we different
We are not typical in our industry, we are the disruptors, we have a different quality of people working for EasyIO and we want to help change the future of our buildings, support the change that is being demanded and play our part in building the foundations of a market that provides solutions that permit buildings to be always open, connected and on.
It is the blend of us, the technology that we have developed and will continue to do so, and our ambition for change that truly define us, as individuals and as a company. We like to work in a community that feels the same, groups of people who are not satisfied with average and want to challenge themselves and others to be better, do better and deliver more.
Let’s Change the Future Together
End customers have the most difficult challenge in bridging the gap on their existing estates to deliver modern occupancy standards and also in ensuring that their new buildings have the right embedded level of technology to support change and flexibility of occupation style over time. In fact they are trying to create financial security for their buildings present and future, managing the growing cost of maintaining and supporting the estate, delivering shareholder value, and ensuring that the buildings deliver an environment that is supportive of the highest levels of productivity in the occupants and delivers spaces that engender comfort and the ability to flourish. This is the challenge whether the customer is a property owner, occupier or both, whether the property is part of a pension fund or whether it is solely owned and managed by a single occupant. EasyIO understand and provide solutions to the key criteria that these types of organisations demand.
- Modern design standards, inclusive and able to last the test of time – EasyIO solutions are purposefully designed to bridge the gap between the historic legacy solutions and the future of the industry, whether this is at a connectivity level for our products within our solution portfolio or within our approach to extracting and delivering data to cloud based technologies and systems that will deliver AI to buildings in the near future.
- Visibility of performance against strategic goals – availability of space over time, cost of running the building, energy performance, occupation quality, Wellbeing standards, lease value, share-holder return. From an enterprise and local level EasyIO provide and support a host of current solutions for delivering data in the most transparent manner, delivering tailored vistas to suit engineering, FM management and general management functions, delivering information in a way that makes sense to the person looking at it. The future of this space is transforming before our eyes and the idea of building data delivering directly to the cloud is here now and we are ready!
- Exception Management – the industry is starting to accept the approach of delivering information in a manner that ensures optimal efficiency of resources, delivering performance data that helps everyone understand that things are in working order rather than requiring specialist skills on a daily basis, and developing intervention and estate management strategies based on exception to norm alerts rather than a continual monitoring approach
- IoT Strategies – EasyIO are at the forefront of enabling the building to become a part of an organisations IoT strategy, delivering the link from complex old world infrastructures in order to deliver data from device all the way through to management data from an enterprise system into your data ocean for best effect and estate management efficiencies
- The “ilities” – at EasyIO’s core we believe in delivering solutions that deliver ultimate flexibility, scalability, adaptability in design and install, and focus on the fact that we break the model by using Open Source technology to deliver this with zero on costs or licencing, and utilise all the advanced capabilities of the IT and IoT industry to deliver against these key criteria
- Sustainability & Energy – as the challenge grows with energy taxation, rising costs from the suppliers, resource limitations, and increased governmental legislation then our industry needs to raise the game to meet the challenge. EasyIO truly help define the E in BEMS, delivering all the tools to help end customers and their supply partners to set up the buildings efficiently and ensure that energy used is in line with occupancy styles, demands and efficiency targets – start at the beginning and ensure you know what you are using and why, efficiency comes from that point onwards!
EasyIO Technology & Approach
EasyIO supplies technology solutions within the BEMS arena, incorporating controls products, enterprise management software solutions and peripherals to combine to deliver next generation systems and solutions. The distinguishing feature from the very onset of the business was the challenge that the founding members set as their key deliverable, namely wanting to break down the industry norm of complexity and deliver improvements that helped engineers do things better, quicker and with a repeatable quality.
All of our control products were and continue to be developed as IP and ethernet based. We embed the best features of the IP and IoT world, whether this is MQTT software or secure WiFI into our controllers thus supplying flexibility and portability to our solutions into the merged world that is here now. Our CTO, Lim Hoon Chiat has always taken the approach with his team of taking IT solutions and building BMS technology into them rather than bolting on IT technology to legacy BMS equipment. This gives us a unique advantage of having stabilised IT technology in position and being a natural choice as the integration solution between legacy and future digitisation demands.
This also gives us a distinct advantage as our solutions have inbuilt IT standards at their core, so security and connectivity are integral to our solution portfolio.
As per the schematic above our solution set permits integration to legacy systems, we have many projects globally where our controls products are used for a specific function within a competitor’s system as our product integrates simply to the head end and within the system design. In addition, our solutions are being designed within replacement strategies for clients who have historically been advised that the only solution is to move forward with is a slightly less outdated technology to the one already in place from the same manufacturer. This then permits for cost effective transitioned implementation to alleviate any building accessibility or major project works and gives access to a platform that then has the ability to integrate areas that have been limited historically or provide MQTT capability as desired.
As previously stated in this document our view on the future of our industry is data being ported to cloud based systems where centralised data management and application of Machine Learning and AI software will be the norm. Large organisations want to do this “points” free, and end clients want to own and manage their own data lakes. The development of systems in the future within our industry will take some time to deliver this, and whilst this is in our mind in terms of enabling that development, we will continue to support points and licence based BMS head end integration whilst it continues to be the norm. Our recent experience is that companies are looking to take disparate data streams from currently segregated systems into a data management solution, collate the data, store it and then look to utilise this data at some point in the future, this is a part of our capability and we are working on projects that deliver this data to Google, AWS and Azure cloud based platform.
For pricing and other queries relating to EasyIO please contact our dedicated sales team sales@ibc.ie or call +353 1 457 5421. To find out more about EasyIO’s product offerings visit us here.
