Connected Buildings suite modernises infrastructure for smart cities
Solutions integrator, Black Box, has created Connected Buildings, a suite of solutions and services that enable digital experiences in smart, IoT buildings. The company designs, deploys, manages and maintains the foundational technology that connects the internal ecosystem of interoperable devices and sensors to enable human-to-human, human-to-device and device-to-device interaction.
Connected Buildings services modernise the IT infrastructure, solve in-building connectivity challenges and link clients’ devices at locations around the world.
“Now more than ever, our customers need spaces that are interactive, adaptive, automated and secure,” said Doug Oathout, senior vice president, Portfolio and Partnerships, Black Box. “At Black Box, we apply our broad portfolio . . . . to take the complexity out of connected buildings and make it simple for our customers by giving them one trusted partner to handle their IT services. Whether updating hundreds of existing locations or outfitting one location from the ground up, our team of project managers, engineers and technicians works with our clients to craft a solution that creates consistent customer experiences and reliable communications,” he said.
The Black Box Connected Building is enabled by fast, robust technologies, for example 5G/CBRS and Wi-Fi to augment existing wireless systems and create fully connected buildings. It also uses edge networking and data centres to collect data where it is created and combine it with artificial intelligence (AI) to make smarter devices. Addressing cybersecurity there is incident and event monitoring, endpoint detection and response, and VPN and firewall services.
The Connected Building services include assessment, consulting and project management, coupled with on-site services for configuration, staging, installation and logistics.
The services fall into four categories. There are those for multi-site deployments, where the Black Box team is able to handle large-scale national/global installations and provide uniform IT at hundreds or thousands of sites.
There are also IoT deployments, where the team supplies and installs cameras, digital signage, point of sale (POS), sensors and other in-building IoT technologies.
Another category is structured cabling and networking, to ensure the infrastructure necessary to support future bandwidth requirements.
Finally, digital transformation covers the management of implementations and deployments of the IoT.
