What is the difference between Building Management System and Smart Home?
Only a person who is far from modern trends has never heard about the "Smart Home". "Smart Things" are gradually gaining their audience and have become common in many countries such as the United States. Nearly 30% of US citizens and 20% of EU citizens will use Smart House systems in the nearest years. However, there are companies that fundamentally reject this term and prefer to name their products as building management systems. Perenio is among them. Why we distance ourselves from the term “smart home” and what are the advantages of our Building Management Systems, you will get to know from the article below.
There is no article about the "Smart Home" in Wikipedia. There is an article dedicated to SMART home technology and material on home automation. Concerning the first article, SMART is understood as Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology – a technology for analyzing and reporting self-monitoring. This is a building management technology developed by IBM.
As for home automation, the heir of which are “Smart Houses”, its history has more than one hundred years. Thus, the invention of the plumbing was the first step to the automation of the household. And it was worthwhile to come up with central heating, as the house became truly “smart.” Compared to this revolutionary idea, Amazon and Google inventions, with which we often associate "smart homes", are only descendants of "ingenious parents." They truly simplify our lives, but if only the central heating system is switched off, any Alexa or monitoring sensors will turn into annoying toys.
As for Building Management Systems, Wikipedia article about them exists. Building Management System is quite a popular term, involving the management of all building systems, starting with ventilation and ending with increasing energy consumption efficiency.
Someone will say that Wikipedia is not an authoritative source. Skeptics may note that the Oxford dictionary has the term smart home, but there’s nothing to say about the building management system there. But experts say that even if “smart home” is a more popular combination, it’s more correct to name such technologies as the Building Management System.
Conclusion: From a professional point of view, the ‘building management system’ is the more correct term to use. The term ‘Smart House’ or ‘smart home’ has become popular thanks to journalists and marketing campaigns, which are not always compatible with the word ‘smart’. This term seemed very convenient for manufacturers. In particular, for such companies as Samsung, Google, and Amazon. In many ways, the choice in favor of Smart House was due to customer expectations. However, it not only does not reveal the essence of the project but can also confuse an advanced user. It is for this reason that at Perenio we decided to call things by their names and started developing Building Management Systems.
The “Smart Home” is the dwelling of the future, which removes itself, with which you can talk and which is completely equipped with all sorts of modern solutions. This is a kind of a fiction that we are making real today. Here is, for example, how the smart home was pictured by Microsoft in 1999:
Nimble reporters quickly picked up the term. Soon the world was filled up with typical solutions for a “smart home”. They all boiled down to the representation of the ideal futuristic dwelling in which it would be comfortable and convenient to live. Here is how Hyundai represents its “Smart Home” today:
Conclusion: “Smart Home” is not a specific technological solution, but a dream that comes true. This term perfectly suits marketing campaigns. The Building Management System sounds cumbersome and is not associated with the world of the future. However, it is this term that more accurately describes the direction in which modern developments are conducted. For us, the Building Management System is not a toy, but a real solution to specific problems.
To invent an unusual and interesting device that “simplifies” life is not as difficult as it seems. You can go in a roundabout way by inventing a device and picking up problems for it (the last will always exist). However, over time, you notice that there are too many appliances in your home. Seemingly “smart” decisions start to conflict each other making your apartment “crazy.”
In solving problems and achieving goals, a systematic approach has always had advantages. If you do not want to do something unusual, fantastic and extraordinary, but calmly and methodically develop the optimal solution, then you have a better chance of success.
The modern market of "Smart Homes" is often producing new and new devices. Often, they interact very poorly with each other at a technical level. For this reason, one of the challenges for modern developers is to create a system that could not only combine all “smart devices”, but also improve their management. This is the path chosen by Perenio company.
At the first stage, we developed the “boxed” PEKIT01 solution for monitoring emergency situations control. Unlike most smart home devices, PEKIT01 is suitable not only for a private apartment but also for security control in offices, warehouses or stores. The system is based on all modern developments in the field of communication protocols, requirements for data storage security and is connected to a convenient and intuitively understandable mobile application. During the development process, we set ourselves the goal of making the system as protected as possible from external influence, but open to new devices.
Conclusion: the "Smart Homes" market represents a lot of fantastic devices today. There is always something unusual and interesting appearing. But do not be surprised if the new gadget will not work the way you expected. Or if it will not be able to interact with the “Smart Things” you have already acquired. If you are interested in a working solution, streamlined and complete, then pay attention to the Perenio Building Management System.
