System Architecture

Decomposing Services

I had a very nice conversation with Bob Smith of Tall Trees yesterday about building services. Bob is one of my co-conspirators launching the Building Service Performance ONTOLOG group. Bob had just submitted the laundry list of check-offs developed by the City of Irvine for its construction process to the ONTOLOG discussion.

I was both happy and disturbed to receive this document. These check-offs clearly drive the contracting process, They are also inherently backward looking, enshrining the best practices of yesterday as we move forward. The best practices of yesterday are better than the normal practices of today, but can be the enemy of better practices going forward. They trade innovation for good enough.

The ONTOLOG (just google it) project is to define an ontology of Building Service Performance. The problem we are trying to resolve is that while people want specific services from their buildings, we always specify technologies or systems, which is something quite different. Buildings may be providing alert students, productive office workers, or regulated environments to store labile chemicals. By discussing the services rather than the systems, we can

  • Allow earlier discussion of / decisions on building goals in keeping with buildingSmart approaches
  • Move conversations about building performance to the business level where commercial building owners will get interested (we want to provide healthy office space metrics in the upper quartile while staying within energy use goals).
  • Commissioning then gets re-defined in terms of service performance effectiveness rather than in terms of system operations, a much more useful measurement.
  • Commissioning numbers that look like B are simple enough to get built in to the sales and leasing processes for commercial buildings, enabling owners to monetize improved performance.

Check off lists such as Bob provided are the opposite of this approach. Nonetheless, I agreed to try to dig up two other documents that are contrary to the goals and thinking of the new group.

One such document is the original list of nearly 50 vertical control system markets that we came up with as oBIX was launching. These systems are specified in buildings now, but only rarely with any sort performance or business deliverable tied to them.

The other document I am trying to come up with is a comprehensive list of ICC (International Codes Council) domains. It struck us during conversation that many of the ICC areas deal with avoiding the failure to perform these services. While we are trying to twist these services around into a new ontology, a list of all the services which must not fail to be provided would be useful.

I have found neither list yet. If you think you have one, please send it along.

Service enabling Telecommunications – lessons for Buildings and Grid

Peter Carbone, Vice President of SOA for Nortel, gave a nice high level talk on the challenges facing a company that grew up with rigid account control and vertical integration in a regulated environment learning to dance in the world of SOA and mash-ups. As markets for building systems are still characterized by rigid account control and vertical integration, and the power grid is still vertically integrated, regulated, and almost complete account control, there are some useful lessons.

Infrastructure convergence was the enabling and driving change for telecommunications. Provisioning telecommunications was long the most difficult task. Over the last decade, the diverse communication infrastructure converged to a single packet-based infrastructure with resulting dramatic simplification of security and reliability. The questions move from “What low level communications do you need” to “What interactive services do you need?”

This evolution changed how Nortel had to think about and market their services. Before the change, Nortel sold vertically integrated applications that were inflexible. As the core technologies converged, Nortel was forced to decompose advanced services into core functions and then plug them back into the new architecture.

Fortunately, decomposing integrated services into core functions looks a lot like defining a service for service oriented architecture. Fundamental telecommunications functions can now be built into enterprise applications without requiring exotic skills are deep domain knowledge.

Skills-based routing and deployment was one example. Peter discussed a SAP integration with critical system causing expensive downtime, emergency part ordering, and synchronizing communication with an outside expert so that the repair personnel, the piece of equipment, and, via telecommunications and real-time identification of the expert on call, the expert’s telepresence were synchronized.

In a similar vein, he discussed abstracting the GPS function from the cell phone to block access in the security system when the phone was in a forbidden zone. Peter gave many more examples and you can find his slides on the OASIS conference site.

So what can building systems and the power grid learn from this?

Well, the owners expect the systems to just run, and are annoyed whenever someone says words like BACnet or LON (or any other control protocol) in their presence. We need to decompose advanced services to discover the core functions, from the owner’s and the tenant’s perspective, and present them as interfaces that can be plugged back into the enterprise.

As Peter summed up the C-Level response: “I just spent $100 Million fixing my processes, you had better be compatible.”

Building services that can present themselves as that can interact with SAP, or with PeopleSoft will have an advantage. The services that know how to display themselves on Google Earth will know how to request the nearest technician.

Likewise, Grid requests that present themselves to ERP services will find faster acceptance. Grid requests that describe grid pricing as shapes that can be pinned to Google Earth will enable the enterprise to come up with multi-site responses that may be different from any single site.

No one cares about the old vertical applications. Enterprise interactions are everything.

Cognitive functions, Autonomy, and Integration

Everywhere we look, we see more higher-level, almost cognitive functions being incorporated into low-level products. Cameras are internalizing much of the craft of photography. GPS systems are comparing notes with their peers to provide up to the minute routing choices. Cars tune themselves on the fly, adjusting carburetion and suspension in real time to respond to driving style. Systems are becoming autonomous, competition is moving from commodity functions to service, and markets are starting to turn around interactions and integration.

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (see link below) described FotoNation and the software that it provides for many brands of digital cameras. I knew about anti-red-eye electronics. I thought it was a neat trick for the camera to automatically focus on faces in the foreground rather than the between them in the center of the view. I was amused at the camera that would alert the picture taker that someone blinked. The camera that delayed the shutter until everyone was smiling was pretty neat.

The ability of a camera to recognize particular faces in the crowd, and make sure that they, if no one else are in focus was different from the rest. Simply take several pictures of your family and friends, and notify the camera. Thereafter if six mothers, standing in the same place each snap a picture at the third grade play, the six cameras will make different decisions and each mother will find her own little Billy in perfect focus.

We now have consumer electronics with complex learning behavior that it applies to its canned pattern recognition tricks. This is customization far beyond the last generation of, say, a car remembering driver preferences for mirror, steering wheel, and seat.

Consumer systems now cover for the amateurish efforts of their operators to produce first class results. Harried amateur photographers get assistance to achieve professional results. Drivers can get performance out of their cars that previously would have required long practice. Trip planning now acquired the knowledge of a local and an instant awareness of traffic conditions.

Building systems face the same issues and are moving in the same direction. Not only are they often operated by amateurs, but the may be maintained by the insufficiently trained—following their installation by the low bidder. Traditionally, systems have been oversized and over-built, to cover these predictable problems. This leaves a lot of energy and operating dollars on the table. The best systems will move instead to make their systems resilient, as are the camera and the car, and self operating.

This will change the tasks asked of control systems, and how they are integrated. Self tuning systems do not need to share low-level details with those far away. Low level protocols will be confined inside autonomous systems, and only higher-level services exposed. These interfaces will be the basis for next generation integration.

Systems will use these newer interfaces to negotiate service provisioning with each other. Although each system should work alone, they should be able to discover resources that each other makes available. Imagine systems advertising their waste heat as a resource, and then the heat source broadcasting when it needs to shut down. These interfaces will be developed as agents; they know their missions, they defend their missions, they act independently.

Integration will come to assume autonomy, for the new interactions will rely on each system doing what it says, and meeting its contracts. Contract-based integration will increase the value of cognitive performance, as they become the only competitive edge in a world of commodity electronics and unpredictable installations.

And systems that expect to be told what to do, rather than simply meeting their contracts? Well, as now, no one will want to do business with such agents.

Knowing ones place in the fabric

As we move from control-based interactions to agent-based interactions between systems, the best systems will use surrounding networks to develop a situational awareness that will set it above its competitors. We won’t be aware of these activities; they will occur without us even noticing. This situation awareness will fall into two categories: awareness of peers and awareness of surroundings. Surprisingly, this awareness will be part of competition on function at the same price-points as systems without awareness.

This morning, Amazon began selling the second, re-tooled version of the Dash Express. The Dash Express is an in-car GPS that does roughly what other in-car GPSs do, and at a similar price. What’s different about the Dash Express is that it is continually attached to the internet. Some out of the box thinking leverages the capability to provide new services.

The obvious stuff is that the Dash Express can keep its traditional GPS functions up-to-date. Was a street renamed or a road completed this week? Changes to Dash maps are automatically downloaded. That new restaurant that you just read a review of? Dash can find it on the internet and guide you there

You can also use the internet yourself as you drive along. You can browse using the Dash Express, and then use Dash to guide you there. Please, just pull off before you do this in traffic. . Looking up places of interest on your home computer? You can send them to your Dash. Dash Express is aware of the changes in its environment and keeps itself up-to-date.

But this is not why I am writing about the Dash Express.

Each Dash Express also transmits information to the internet. It can check the current or recent road speed on each alternate route and choose the one for you accordingly.The more Dashes are on the road in your town, the better this information is. For the first time, we are seeing network effects in GPS performance.

(Network effect refers to markets in which the value of each item increases the more that are on the market. The classical example is the Fax. The first Fax was not worth much until the second fax was plugged in. Once most office had a Fax, you almost could not afford to not have one.)

It is interesting to speculate if we will see emergent behaviors in city traffic in town where there is a sufficient density of installed Dashes. What effects will a stadium parking lot of tailgaters with their engines on have on Dash calculations? Will traffic start to pulse as Dash advices crowds to not take that onramp? Will people watch for installed Dashes as they watch for radar detectors now. Taking a free ride on the technology?

Soon agents in each house will be able to receive “prices to devices”. If I am right, they will aggregate device information through a house agent. Will house agents negotiate with other houses to aggregate larger blocks of demand to sell? Will they ready our Google Calendars and be extra aggressive when we are away from home?

It’s hard to know. But situation awareness leveraging network effects at the same price point does raise a lot of possibilities.