Building owners and operators are increasingly moving to as-a-service models to offload the technical responsibilities of managing their applications, data centers, and networks. Smart Building as a Service (SBaaS) is a similar model where building management systems and associated components and services are delivered as a service by a third-party provider as opposed to being managed in-house.
This growing trend helps building owners and operators streamline how smart building technologies are designed, deployed, and operated with a focus on reliability, cost management, and delivering a quality occupant experience. Let’s look at the core components of SBaaS, cost benefits, and potential drawbacks.
What Are the Core Components of SBaaS?
Managed service providers that offer SBaaS use a Building Management System (BMS) to orchestrate the operation of a wide range of smart building technologies, including:
- Energy management
- HVAC automation
- Building access and security
- Occupancy management
- Smart lighting
- Water usage
- Air quality management
- IoT/OT infrastructure management
To streamline many of these processes, the SBaaS provider will incorporate a range of technologies to autonomously monitor and manage these systems. Common technologies include data collection and analysis, AI and machine learning (ML), cloud computing, and microservices. These technologies are used to deliver precise monitoring and automation without human intervention. Systems are designed to self-heal whenever possible and alert SBaaS staff when issues arise that cannot be resolved using automated processes.
What Are the Cost Benefits of SBaaS?
Traditional methods of acquiring, deploying, and managing smart building technologies require:
- Research to select relevant technologies
- Design of a smart building architecture that meets each individual building’s need
- Creation of a bill of materials (BoM) list of hardware and software components that need to be purchased
- Setting up and testing the smart building technology in a staging environment
- Deployment of the tested technologies throughout a building or campus
- Configuration of the technologies for operations and management
- Management of ongoing maintenance, upgrades, and integrations
- Refresh aging architectures and hardware when the installed equipment reaches an end-of-life (EOL) stage
Throughout each of these processes, building operators must either rely on in-house resources or pay a third-party integration and management vendor to handle on their behalf. The problem is that mistakes can be made within each of these stages, requiring more effort to keep systems operating effectively. From an operational expense perspective, there are too many unknowns that can arise that lead to highly unpredictable spending. This unpredictability can lead to a significantly higher-than-expected total cost of ownership (TCO) and a return on investment (ROI) that’s often never met.
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Moving to an SBaaS model removes most of the unknown risks to building operators, as the onus is on the provider to keep the smart building technologies operational. In many cases, the SBaaS provider attaches service-level agreements (SLAs) to the contract that must be adhered to. This results in a consistent TCO and an ROI that can be accurately calculated over the lifespan of smart building technologies.
What Are the Potential Drawbacks of SBaaS?
Because SBaaS is a relatively new and evolving business model, the number of SBaaS providers on the market today is limited. Depending on the location of the buildings you operate, the number of service providers will vary.
Additionally, pay close attention to how the vendor presents the SBaaS architecture and what technologies they have in place. In some cases, few automations and AI systems are integrated, leading to truck rolls by the provider to fix rudimentary issues, often leading to longer-than-expected downtime.
Finally, be sure to clearly understand and agree to the division of responsibilities when it comes to managing systems and services within an SBaaS. Some providers will want to take full control, requiring them to conduct any and all changes or fixes. Others offer a shared responsibility model that allows in-house building IT staff to control certain aspects of the technologies that a building operator may or may not want to maintain control over.
As building owners and operators increasingly turn to SBaaS to simplify the management of their advanced building technologies, the benefits of this model are becoming clear, making it a potential game-changer in building management. By thoroughly assessing providers and understanding the model’s scope, building operators can leverage SBaaS to its fullest potential, ultimately creating smarter, more efficient, and user-friendly buildings.
