Do more with less: Moving power and building management to the cloud

by Markus Hirschbold and Grant Reig

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Executive summary

Building owners and operators are facing growing demands for buildings that are more sustainable, resilient, efficient, and people-centric. New cloud-hosted power and building management applications can help meet these business, regulatory, and occupant requirements with a scalable solution that minimises the costs of onsite IT services, computing hardware, and software. Additionally, cloud-hosting secures data storage, simplifies remote operations and cross-team collaboration, and enables facilities with limited resources to engage expert advisory services.

Introduction

From large education and government campuses, to healthcare facilities, to office complexes, hotels, industrial facilities, and retail chains, it is no longer enough for organisations to manage buildings under the old paradigm of doing the minimum possible to keep operations running. It is now recognised that a building’s infrastructure affects every facet of occupant and operational performance over its entire lifecycle.

The Schneider Electric framework for ‘Buildings Of The Future’ defines a new operational paradigm in which all facilities are more sustainable, resilient, hyper-efficient, and people-centric. The digitalisation of electrical and HVAC systems – including associated energy and power management system (EPMS) and building management system (BMS) software – has given facility teams the data, insights, and control needed to achieve these outcomes.

However, many organisations do not have the budget available to purchase and maintain the required on-site EPMS and BMS software and computing hardware. They may also not have the people, time, or expertise to take full advantage of these applications.