Democratization is the action of making something accessible to everyone. Specifically, in buildings, this has to do with the democratization of information through technology. By making technology that enables easier to deploy and use systems, the information becomes more accessible to a wider audience. 

A democratized product offering is:

• Affordably priced and positioned to fit the mass market
• Simple and practical in design
• Scalable to meet new price points

As a leader in smart buildings, J2 Innovations has evolved its technology into three unique offerings that embrace democratization: FIN Framework, FIN Edge2Cloud, and FIN application suites.

FIN Framework

As a core technology, the FIN Framework provides a foundation for developers and OEM partners to create unique products that are simple by design. The user experience has optimized workflows built-in and leverages tagging and data modeling to automate much of the manual tasks. This pragmatic approach to creating solutions helps partners create products that are better, faster, and easier to deploy. This means that projects can be done at a lower price because the total cost of labor is significantly reduced. 

Edge2Cloud

By connecting intelligent buildings and IoT devices to the cloud, J2 Innovations’ technology unlocks the information to make big data accessible at scale. Edge2Cloud provides the connectivity and the management of enormous amounts of sites, devices, and data. By implementing Haystack Tagging at the site level the data becomes self describing; and when connected to the cloud it can be easily consumed by cloud-based applications. Thanks to the work of Project Haystack, clean data is now available for the masses.

Application Suites

Traditional Building Automation Systems (BAS) require a high degree of expertise and skill to provision and create a custom solution. Future smart buildings might be more like residential smart homes with plug-n-play and wizard-based implementation. Full scale BAS represents only a portion of the total market (think college campus vs convenient stores). By taking an appliance approach, we democratize the information and enable more buildings with smart technology. J2 Innovations’ application suites (microBMS, FIN Eco, and FIN Edge IoT) provide the technology needed to create affordable solutions that make it practical to implement lots of smaller intelligent buildings. 

Our plug-n-play approach to building technology simplifies the user experience, reducing the labor and skill needed to implement a solution so that it is accessible to a greater number of buildings. By adding metadata through Haystack tagging and connecting that data to the cloud, the information becomes available to a wider audience. Through the use of J2 Innovations’ technology, the promise of affordable, simple, and scalable intelligent buildings is now possible, therefore enabling the democratization of smart buildings.