"Tridium's Niagara Framework® is designed to integrate diverse formats regardless of manufacturer or communication protocol," said Frost & Sullivan research analyst Jorge Moreno. "For customers this means operating on one unified platform, with easy data access through the Internet, real-time information sharing, and ultimately simplified interoperability and integration between building infrastructures to improve efficiency and maximize cost savings."
The Niagara Framework is designed to take into account all critical areas that form the subsystems of a building including HVAC, lighting, security, and energy management. It allows devices to share information with each other and streamline it into an enterprise system where management can control and monitor the buildings' operations anytime from anywhere.
The technology is also designed to enable end-users to collect information and benchmark buildings to expose operational inefficiencies and facilitate solutions. From a green building perspective, end-users can capitalize on accurate intelligence relating to the energy performance of a building in order to achieve lower energy consumption and enhanced efficiencies.
In addition to offering the Niagara Framework as a development platform to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to build their own solutions, Tridium also offers a Niagara based management and control product suite known as Vykon® that orchestrates the building automation, energy, and security functions of a facility, and ensures the integration and interoperability among the different systems and devices within the facility. Currently, there are over 50,000 instances of Niagara operating in over 6,000 installations worldwide.
"Meeting all the complex challenges of real-world integration and enterprise connectivity is a major challenge in the building automation industry," noted Moreno. "Niagara ensures simpler connectivity along with easy installation and operation of the system backed by comprehensive tools to support both application developers and software developers."
Publication date: 09/18/2006