Siemens and IBM team on next generation of cloud-based building energy management solutions

• Cloud-based building management platform leverages enterprise asset management and data analytics technologies to help meet sustainability goals
• Collaboration with IBM Watson Internet of Things Business Unit showcased at IBM InterConnect 2016 will transform real estate performance

LAS VEGAS, Feb. 22, 2016-Today, the Siemens Building Technologies Division and IBM (NYSE:IBM) announced cloud-based solutions that will leverage Siemens' building expertise and IBM Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities to maximize the potential of connected buildings and the data they create, helping corporate real estate owners across multiple industries drive business results and meet energy efficiency goals.

Building intelligence is evolving through emerging technologies in cloud computing, data analytics, and intelligent field devices - effectively merging the virtual and real worlds within the built environment. This shift provides an opportunity to transform real estate assets into active contributors to business success. The solution addresses this opportunity by delivering greater transparency and flexibility to support the decision making process while creating greater efficiency and cost savings to help impact the bottom line.

Siemens is integrating software from IBM's Watson IoT Business Unit, including analytics and asset management, into its cloud-based Navigator energy and sustainability management platform. This combination will help benefit corporate real estate customers in many ways, including:

• Corporate real estate owners and operators will now be able to leverage internal and external data on Siemens' Navigator platform to benchmark building performance and forecast operational budgets.
• Predictive analytics can be applied for fault detection and diagnosis so potential issues can be addressed before anything happens.
• Text recognition and analytics for utility invoice validation can identify billing errors and enhance data quality.
• Mobile applications can enable energy audits and creation of audit reports from anywhere.

"Of all the software solutions available to corporate real estate owners today, none leverage facility optimization solutions from a service provider like Siemens," explained Matthias Rebellius, CEO, Siemens Building Technologies Division. "By interfacing our Navigator platform with IBM's software, we can bring Siemens' proven expertise in energy optimization and building performance together with IBM's real estate and asset management systems to create an unrivaled combination that will dramatically improve the productivity of buildings."

The Siemens Navigator platform provides a customizable suite of services that enables monitoring of building system performance, energy demand, and energy supply more effectively and efficiently across a single building, a campus, or an entire real estate portfolio. With IBM's IoT technologies integrated into the new Navigator platform, customers will experience a user-friendly interface and will benefit from more advanced analytics capabilities as well as the ability to process more robust data sets from their real estate portfolios. The Navigator platform can also integrate with any system, including the Siemens Desigo CC building management system and third party technologies. The new Navigator functionality will be rolled out in packages over the coming years starting this year, with releases in May and October.

"Connected 'things' - everything from hospital beds, train tracks, cars, buildings and more - are generating massive amounts of data that can be analyzed to provide quick, actionable insights," said Harriet Green, General Manager, Watson IoT, Education & Commerce, IBM. "Siemens and IBM are bringing together deep knowledge of new efficiencies for smarter buildings with advances in cloud-based IoT to transform business and society alike."

"Our collaboration will form a strong foundation for the development of a greater ecosystem that will support other providers to bring improved functionality and innovations to the services and solutions we offer to our shared clients," said Matthias Rebellius.

The corporate real estate industry is just beginning to scratch the surface of advanced data analytics for the purpose of producing consistent results and enabling easier decision-making. Operating costs account for 71 percent of the total cost of owning a buildingi and real estate is often the second largest expense on the income statement for large enterprise organizationsii. Building owners and operators can now leverage solutions across the entire lifecycle of their real estate assets to predict energy efficiency trends and equipment availability issues in advance, so that building operation can be as reliable, cost-effective, and sustainable as possible.

Siemens is making further significant investments in Digitalization and has developed the Sinalytics platform for advanced, predictive data analytics across its various businesses. Siemens Building Technologies is combining its analytics capabilities and IBM software tools for a next generation software platform for energy management and sustainability - Navigator, powered by Sinalytics.

About Siemens Building Technologies
The Siemens Building Technologies Division (Zug, Switzerland) is the world leader in the market for safe and secure, energy-efficient and environment-friendly buildings and infrastructures. As technology partner, service provider, system integrator and product vendor, Building Technologies has offerings for safety and security as well as building automation, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) and energy management. With around 27,000 employees worldwide, Building Technologies generated revenue of approx. 6.0 billion Euro.

Siemens AG (Berlin and Munich) is a global technology powerhouse that has stood for engineering excellence, innovation, quality, reliability and internationality for more than 165 years. The company is active in more than 200 countries, focusing on the areas of electrification, automation and digitalization. One of the world's largest producers of energy-efficient, resource-saving technologies, Siemens is No. 1 in offshore wind turbine construction, a leading supplier of gas and steam turbines for power generation, a major provider of power transmission solutions and a pioneer in infrastructure solutions as well as automation, drive and software solutions for industry. The company is also a leading provider of medical imaging equipment - such as computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging systems - and a leader in laboratory diagnostics as well as clinical IT. In fiscal 2015, which ended on September 30, 2015, Siemens generated revenue of a75.6 billion and net income of a7.4 billion. At the end of September 2015, the company had around 348,000 employees worldwide. Further information is available on the Internet at www.siemens.com.

About IBM
For more information about IBM Watson IoT, please visit www.ibm.com/iot or follow @IBMIoT on Twitter.

iGardner, Mark, The Builder's Association, "Total Cost of Ownership," February 1, 2013
iiCB Richard Ellis, "Driving an Aggressive Occupancy Cost Reduction Program," January 2009

Siemens
Amanda Naiman, 484-680-4427
amanda.naiman@siemens.com
or
IBM
Hanna Smigala, 203-512-5497
smigala@us.ibm.com

The post Siemens and IBM team on next generation of cloud-based building energy management solutions appeared first on POWER Magazine.