OASIS oBIX Technical Committee Forms to Advance Web Services Standard for Building Management Industry

["Scott McGrath" <scott.mcgrath@oasis-open.org>]

OASIS oBIX Technical Committee Forms to Advance Web Services Standard for
Building Management Industry

Boston, MA, USA; 21 June 2004 -- International standards consortium, OASIS,
announced plans to advance oBIX (Open Building Information Xchange), a Web
services implementation for the building management and controls industry.
The new OASIS oBIX Technical Committee will define a standard method to
enable mechanical and electrical systems in facilities and buildings to
communicate with enterprise applications. oBIX is an example of the growing
trend of vertical industries organizing within OASIS to develop standards
that leverage Web services methods for their specific industry needs.

oBIX will be applicable to a wide variety of smart systems embedded in
facilities, such as heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC),
elevators, laboratory equipment, life/safety systems, access control,
intruder detection, audio visual event management, closed circuit television
monitoring, and many others. oBIX will also provide access to information
from sensing devices that are not typically part of control systems,
delivering real-time access to sensors that measure or monitor the physical
space in a facility, including environmental sensing, electrical panels, and
power meters. 

"Currently, there is no easy way for IT departments to integrate their
enterprise systems with those that run their buildings. Yet facilities
represent the largest physical asset most companies have. Using Web services
to enhance the effectiveness of building control systems promises to have an
enormous impact on an organization's bottom line," said Ron Zimmer,
President & CEO of the Continental Automated Buildings Association (CABA).
oBIX was originally established as a working group within CABA, which will
continue its involvement through participation in OASIS. 

"oBIX is an exciting example of applying Web services to solve a specific
market requirement," added Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. "The
building controls industry recognized the need for a standard optimized for
Internet technology. By choosing to advance this work within OASIS, CABA's
domain experts join together with developers of more than 14 Web services
initiatives currently underway at our consortium. We believe that proximity
to other OASIS Web services standards efforts will help foster
interoperability and encourage reuse of related work."

"oBIX will improve operational effectiveness, giving facility managers and
building owners increased knowledge and control of their properties. It will
be a major step forward in fulfilling the vision of truly intelligent
buildings," said Toby Considine of the University of North Carolina,
proposed chair of the OASIS oBIX Technical Committee.

The OASIS oBIX Technical Committee is made up of users and vendors from all
sectors of the building controls market, including the security, HVAC,
building automation, open protocol, and IT disciplines. Current members are
listed at
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/membership.php?wg_abbrev=obix, however,
participation remains open to all organizations and individuals. OASIS also
offers a mechanism for public comment on the work. The Technical Committee
plans to prioritize oBIX development based on input from the community and
particularly seeks use scenarios from those managing systems for large
office buildings, universities, hospitals, etc.

"We intend to work with control protocols such as LonTalk (now known as
ANSI/EIA/CEA709.1) and BACnet (ASHRAE/ANSI 135-2001, ISO 16484-5) so that
oBIX can become the vehicle to take building systems to the TCP/IP layer in
a consistent manner for the benefit of the enterprise. oBIX will also make
it possible to integrate the many legacy proprietary control and monitoring
systems in use today as well as future, native TCP/IP control systems,"
noted Paul Ehrlich of Trane, convener of the OASIS oBIX Technical Committee.

Anders Axelsson, senior vice-president of sales and marketing at Echelon,
added, "We have been strong advocates of XML and Web services for
enterprise-level interfaces and as a mechanism for data exchange amongst
otherwise disconnected systems for some time. The combination of open
control networks within buildings and oBIX open information exchange at 
the enterprise and gateway levels will, we believe, eliminate many of the
complexities, confusion, and redundancies that can keep building owners and
facility managers from reaping the many benefits of open systems." 


About OASIS

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards)
is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development,
convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set
the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly
designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. The
consortium produces more Web services standards than any other organization
along with standards for security, e-business, and standardization efforts
in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993,
OASIS has more than 3,000 participants representing over 600 organizations
and individual members in 100 countries. Approved OASIS Standards include
CAP, DocBook, DSML, ebXML, SAML, SPML, UDDI, WSRP, WSS, XACML, and XCBF.
http://www.oasis-open.org

More information:

OASIS oBIX Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/obix
Cover Pages Technology Report: http://xml.coverpages.org/facilitiesXML.html
oBIX Initiative: http://www.obix.org

Press contact:
Carol Geyer
Director of Communications
OASIS
carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
+1.978.667.5115 x209