The Internet of Things (IoT) is having a profound impact connecting buildings and industrial networks to IT environments. By linking your industrial sensors, robotics, trucks, and other equipment with your enterprise applications, through the Internet of Things (IoT), companies have better visibility into what's happening in the environment. More importantly, these companies can more quickly and effectively respond to that information.

Connected Buildings and Incident Management

One area where IoT is changing the landscape is building management.   Traditionally, building management systems have been maintained on independent and proprietary networks.   This worked when the requirements were for stand-alone systems.   However, with the emergence of IoT, these systems are migrating to an IP/Ethernet based platform.   The benefits of this include: (1) improved ability to communicate between systems, (2) better integration with the building IT networks, and (3) ability to communicate outside the building.

One example is in fire and life safety.   Organizations are now looking at these solutions to be more than fire detection and alarm systems by providing additional capabilities and becoming incident management systems.

Edwards/UTC Moving into IoT

For example, when Edwards Fire Safety, a division of UTC Building & Industrial Systems, was looking for 'Solutions for the Future', they looked to Cisco. Working with Edwards, Cisco's IoT business unit initiated a program under a Strategic Technology Integration agreement that combines Cisco's ruggedized IE 2000 switch with the fire and life safety system.

To properly operate in these environments, networking devices must be highly ruggedized to protect the internal components. Specific and tight connectors are needed to avoid any possible water penetration and disconnects due to vibrations.

For Edwards, this provides a smart, next generation communication platform that provides three key benefits:

1. Faster Deployments -The "Powered by Cisco" logo is one that is certainly respected and recognized within the networking ecosystem.   Edwards can leverage this logo to quickly address any concerns about the power of their solution components when working with building IT and networking teams.
2. Next Generation Platform -Allows Edwards to utilize an IP/Ethernet based solution.   This offers multiple benefits including: common platform, open standards, scale and security, and the opportunity to build additional capabilities on the solution to support incident management.
3. Solution Support -Enables Edwards to easily and quickly perform diagnostic and remediation of networks issues using a smart and managed switch.

Take a look at the solution at this year's ASIS Conference:

Finding Solutions for the Future

Cisco makes it easy to capitalize on industrial connectivity and IT-to-operations convergence. We bring industry-leading network and management capabilities to your harshest environments, while providing end-to-end solutions to address every aspect of industrial networking, including plant routing and switching, field networks, embedded networks, and physical security. And all of these solutions integrate with Cisco's traditional wired and wireless networking, security, collaboration, and data center solutions as part of a single, converged platform. For more information about Cisco switches, visit www.cisco.com/go/ie2000.