Progress toward “smart networks” enabled by distributed data management software is gaining momentum. A developer of futuristic automated building technology is collaborating with Solid Information Technology Corp. to enable remote web-based control of security, environmental control and other advanced premises systems.
Lonix Ltd. (www.lonix.fi), a venture spearheaded by Finnish futurist Risto Linturi, will use Solid Tech’s (www.solidtech.com) FlowEngine synchronized network management software in conjunction with a new automated building integration platform known as Connected Open Building Automation to enable more intelligent use of sensors and actuators within buildings to support remotely managed operations, officials said. They noted the technology opens a means by which service providers can offer automated buildings systems management as a service to building owners and residences.
Solid Tech’s system “helps us deliver a new class of smart networks and buildings,” Linturi said. “Their unique approach to data management with patented synchronization technology allows innovative smart appliance vendors and service providers to offer creative new services that enhance the environment in which a person lives and works.”
Solid Tech, which was launched in Helsinki in 1992 and moved to Mountain View, Calif., in 1999, has been providing its data management software to a wide range of network equipment manufacturers on an OEM basis, including: Nortel Networks (www.nortel.com) in conjunction with its Shasta IP VPN system; Hewlett-Packard Co. (www.hp.com) in products such as its OpenView and Internet Usage Manager Platforms; Nokia Corp. (www.nokia.com) for management of mobile base stations;and Celox Networks Inc. (www.celoxnetworks.com) to handle the flow of system information in the vendor’s edge aggregation and IP service switches. In another example, Turin Networks Inc. (www.turinnetworks.com) makes use of the distributed intelligence in its optical multi-service edge transport products to store and synchronize system configuration and provisioning data.
In all these cases, the Solid Tech software is embedded in the master control processors that run the network equipment, enabling the gear to operate across all locations in the network and giving service providers centralized control over provisioning and system management, notes Jussi Harvela, president and CEO at Solid Tech. “Service providers are looking for a more efficient approach to managing their networks, which means the information collected from network components has to be more granular and synchronized than ever before,” he said. “This applies to fault data, accounting information for billing purposes and data for configuring, provisioning and security.”
While many manufacturers supply their own intelligent management software in their products, the complexities associated with collecting and synchronizing so many pieces of information often prove too daunting to keep up with as products evolve, Harvela noted. “Typically, when they get to version 2.0 of their data management software they realize they’re getting beyond their in-house capabilities,” he said. “That’s where we come in.”
Such capabilities are essential to enabling the value-added, complex service portfolios that service providers hope to offer over broadband networks, said Francesca Mabarak, senior analyst for wireless/mobile technologies at the Yankee Group (www.yankeegroup.com). “From a data management perspective, this is the new frontier,” she said. “Solid FlowEngine appeals to top telecom technology leaders because it resolves the issue of managing complex system-level data in highly distributed, massively scalable networks.”
In the case of the deal between Solid and Lonix, offering smart building services becomes another option in the service mix, said Kathie Hackler, vice president at Gartner, Inc. (www.gartner.com). “Smart Buildings are a subset of the whole picture of smart networks,” she said. “The fully digital, connected and automated world that we’ve seen in comic books is coming to our neighborhoods soon.”
How soon, of course, depends on market demand for such advanced services. The case for building automation is well made in the building management business, but is far less established in the smart home arena. Where the latter becomes interesting is in conjunction with service providers’ ability to offer advanced entertainment and information services to consumers.
Harvela said Solid was targeting this arena along with access technologies such as DSL in efforts to expand its market base on the consumer services front. Voice over IP systems represent another new market area where distributed data management will play a major role as service providers move away from centralized gateway control systems, he added.
