We are excited to release the January 2020 issue of the SkyFoundry Insider newsletter. 2020 marks 10+ years for us here at SkyFoundry. From the earliest days when people said, “tell me again what you are doing”, to deployment of SkySpark across more than 1 Billion square feet of facilities worldwide, it continues to be a fascinating journey. In this issue we comment on that journey and key learnings, along with announcements of important new features and articles including:

• Analytics is More than FDD
• Codeless integration with LDAP for User Management
• The What and the Why of Distributed Architecture, Clustering, Replication and Provisioning
• SkySpark’s Role in Simplifying Energy Reporting Compliance

Find the Latest Issue of the Insider here

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SkyFoundry is excited to announce that it has been recognized as one of the Top Ten providers of Energy Management software for 2019 by CIO Insights Magazine. The award and a feature article can be found in the December 2019 Issue of CIO Insights – Energy Management Edition.

You can find the article as part of the full digital edition of the magazine at this link

Or find an html version of the article at this link

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The Better Buildings Challenge inspired the University of Utah to focus on energy intensive buildings, which lead to a controls upgrade to convert constant volume labs to variable volume. SkyFoundry partner BuildingFit was engaged to integrate the building’s control system to SkySpark® to provide live functional testing and optimization of equipment systems, all of which fell within the warranty period.

The results were dramatic:

• $386,000 annual energy savings
• Safer student labs
• Proven air flow reduction on 100% of the systems
• Custom analytics for ongoing optimization of laboratory systems

Our thanks to BuildingFit for this great example of the financial benefits provided by SkySpark. You can read the full Case Study here

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Data Analytics Is About More than FDD – Read the Article on AutomatedBuildings.com

Mention the term “analytics,” and many people will immediately think – “Fault Detection – analytics is used to detect faulty operation of equipment systems.” While FDD is an important use of analytics, it’s not the only one. Organizations that embrace the full capabilities of true data analytics are able to address a range of financial and organizational needs faced in operating and maintaining facilities and equipment systems and move to data-driven facility management.

This article by SkyFoundry’s John Petze in the December issue of AutomatedBuildings.com, outlines the wider case for using analytics to address a range of financial and organizational needs. Find the article at this link

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As the world becomes more aware of the need for fully distributed computing to address the needs of the IoT, SkySpark’s distributed architecture continues to gain recognition for its industry leading distributed computing technology.

Recently, insight.tech published an article, written by Max Maxfield, focusing on distributed analytics for the IoT which highlighted SkySpark Everywhere. We are excited to be the focus of this article. Find the article at this link

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We are excited to inform our community of the release of the Fall 2019 issue of Haystack Connections magazine. This 6th issue of Haystack Connections echoes the central theme of the Haystack Connect 2019 conference – collaboration. Bringing a true, open-source development effort to the buildings industry which has historically been dominated by prescribed standards and proprietary technology, has been both rewarding and challenging. You can find the new issue of the magazine here

The central focus of Haystack is to enable software developers, system integrators, building owners and operators to easily use the data produced by the equipment, devices and sensors that make up the built environment. At its heart, therefore, Haystack is a software effort. When we look to the world of software, it's undeniable that open source movements have changed the landscape, solving problems no single manufacturer or supplier could have addressed on their own. There are some things in life, science and technology that “take a village” to address and Project Haystack is one of those. As an open source effort the results are directly correlated to the contributions and participation of the community.

The energy of the community was on full display in May, at the fourth biennial Haystack Connect Conference, which was a tremendous success and saw the community continue to grow with attendees from around the world, new working groups and adoption by more and more suppliers and service providers.

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We are excited to announce a new SkySpark Case Study. The BBVA Group corporate headquarters in Spain, known as BBVA City, is located in the Las Tablas district of Madrid. It is a complex of 114,000m2, accommodating 8000 employees, in 7 buildings.

Sistrol a SkyFoundry VAR in Spain provides the BBVA complex with analytics as a managed service under a program they call “WhyB”. WhyB monitors the building systems, automatically finding operational incidents, which are then analyzed, prioritized and managed by a WhyB Analyst. The Analyst works directly with facility managers to explain, advise and help manage response to analytic findings to improve energy performance, comfort and reliability.

You can find the detailed Case Study at this link

Our thanks to Sistrol for this great example of applying SkySpark as a managed service.

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In this issue of the SkyFoundry Insider we focus on the global reach and wide range of services offered by SkyFoundry’s Worldwide Partner network.

All buildings are different, and all organizations have different needs. For some, a managed service that monitors their facilities and equipment remotely and delivers recommendations for corrective actions is the right fit. Others want their data to stay on-premise, inside their secure networks, and have their in-house facilities teams work directly with the analytics software. These are just some of the reasons that SkySpark is delivered through a worldwide network of over 135 authorized partners. These professionals, which include consulting engineering firms, managed service providers, top-tier control systems integrators, M&V and commissioning professionals and managed service providers, present facility managers with unequaled choice in planning and implementing a data analytics strategy for their organizations.

In this issue we highlight a few of SkyFoundry’s partners from across the globe and the range of offerings they provide to help owners to achieve data-driven operations.

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SkyFoundry is excited to announce that Conserve It SrL has been appointed as SkyFoundry’s Value Added Distributor (VAD) for Italy as part of Conserve It’s recently announced expansion to Europe and the Middle East. As the SkyFoundry VAD for Italy, Conserve It provides SkySpark sales and support services for both Systems Integrators and End Users in the Italian market, including integration with data sources, analytic rule development and integration with third party applications.

Conserve It has been highly successful as SkyFoundry's VAD for Australia and the Oceania region since joining the SkyFoundry reseller community as one of our first partners in 2011. They have deep experience with SkySpark, and extensive experience in building automation, energy efficiency and central plant design and control.

We are excited to welcome Conserve It SrL to the growing SkyFoundry community where they join our EU-based VADs including Akbin (Turkey), Cimpro (Benelux), Forest Rock (UK), GC5 (Poland), ITEC (Switzerland), and Sensitive Data (Spain).

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SkyFoundry is excited to announce that Global Control 5 (GC5) has been appointed as SkyFoundry’s Value Added Distributor (VAD) for Poland and the surrounding region. As the SkyFoundry VAD for Poland, GC5 provides SkySpark sales and support services for both Systems Integrators and End Users in the Polish market including integration with data sources, analytic rule development and integration with third party applications.

Global Control 5 Ltd. is well known as a leader in hardware and software technology for building automation. They have a team of highly experienced specialists with many years of experience in both building automation and industrial systems. GC5 creates technologically sophisticated solutions and designs, develops and produce a wide range of products under their iSMA (Intelligent Solution Managing Automation) brand. The GC5 portfolio consists of supervisory software, and a wide range of controllers, I/O modules, sensors and relays. Innovation, openness and individual approach to each project and customer make iSMA products so well recognized all over the world.

We are excited to welcome Global Control 5 to the growing SkyFoundry community where they join our EU-based VADs including Cimpro (Benelux), Forest Rock (UK), ITEC (Switzerland), Akbin (Turkey), and Sensitive Data (Spain).

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