California-based View announced a complete cloud-native platform to enable smart buildings at this month’s Realcomm conference in Florida.

The digital transformation of real estate promises healthier and more sustainable buildings, better experiences for occupants, and greater operational efficiencies for building owners. But real estate IT and digital innovation teams lack a secure, unified device infrastructure and data platform to drive transformative outcomes across their entire portfolio.

As a result, many building owners are either capturing little value from their systems and devices or spending millions of dollars to integrate a patchwork quilt of point options to capture greater value. The latter often results in significant cost overruns, poor returns and increased exposure to cyber-security threats.

View created its smart building cloud to address these problems head-on.

The smart building cloud provides real estate technology teams with the platform and all software components required to connect, manage and optimise a portfolio of smart buildings with strong cyber-security protection and flexibility.

The modular, open, secure platform, which extends from network to application, allows IT and digital innovation teams to consolidate and normalise building data securely from across their entire portfolio into a cloud-based environment, and drive business outcomes such as reduced energy consumption and more efficient facilities management with pre-configured insights and automations. Open APIs and out-of-the-box integrations with over forty real estate technologies such as SkySpark, Switch Automation, ThingWorx, Rise by VTS, Mapped and UtiliVisor can accelerate business value.

The smart building cloud can be deployed in new and existing buildings, and with or independently of View Smart Glass, the company’s flagship product that uses artificial intelligence to optimise access to natural light and outdoor views while keeping occupants comfortable. Every Smart Glass installation comes with an extensible OT network, View Net, that supports smart building devices and applications and serves as the foundation for a complete smart building technology stack.

“We have deployed View Secure Edge and Remote Access in nearly 100 buildings being served by hundreds of vendors and have been thrilled with the outcome,” said Khanh Nguyen, vice president of technology at Kilroy Realty. “Our buildings are not only more secure and more unified than ever, but also far more cost-effective to manage. With View, we cut our vendor fees by 75 per cent and realised more than a million dollars in annual operational cost savings.”

The smart building cloud aggregates data from connected systems, sensors and applications within a building and applies data normalisation and spatial contexts. Products in the family include:

• Secure Edge: a plug-and-play edge-to-cloud offering that enables IT and digital innovation teams to connect new and existing buildings securely to the cloud; centrally manage building networks, systems and data in the cloud; and deploy edge applications for real-time processing, insights and optimisations. Secure Edge can be deployed by a building’s existing IT staff in less than a day.
• Remote Access: a secure access portal that enables IT teams to reduce the cost and cyber-security risks of maintaining smart buildings by providing vendors and technicians with secure, auditable, time-bound remote access to building networks and devices.
• Building Performance: a configurable application and web-based tools that enable building managers to measure, optimise and automate building performance with comprehensive, contextual and actionable insights consolidated from disparate on-premises and cloud-based systems.
• Workplace Experience: a configurable application and web-based tools that let corporate facilities managers create healthier, more efficient and more productive workplaces by uncovering actionable insights related to building health, space use and workplace operations.

“View is on a mission to transform the human experience inside buildings, while dramatically reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions from real estate,” said Rahul Bammi, chief business officer at View. “Customers are using our platform to harness data already generated by their buildings to immediately enhance the occupant experience, reduce energy consumption and gain operational efficiencies. The smart building cloud extends the value that View already provides with our Smart Glass. Building owners can now optimise every aspect of their new and existing buildings, from natural light and energy efficiency to air quality, space utilisation, and even building maintenance and repairs.”

Components of the smart building cloud have been deployed in over 4.6 million square metres of buildings globally. Notable users include Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Tishman Speyer, RXR, Deutsche Bank and CBRE.

“At RXR, we have long recognised the transformative value of technology and smart buildings to give our customers the environment and the experience to thrive,” said Scott Rechler, CEO of RXR. “View provides the enterprise-grade technology backbone that’s needed to easily and securely add new devices and capabilities, as well as the real-time actionable insights needed to capture immediate business value.”