Recently, we had the opportunity to talk shop with a large, multi-site facility owner. It was great to hear his questions and address his concerns. Here's a quick summary of things that are important to an end user relative to remotely accessing their building automation systems.
Two great examples of OEM partners who leverage Edge2Cloud in their Smart Building products are Blackstone Energy Services and Coster Group.
Blackstone has built blackPAC™ on the robust foundation provided by FIN Framework. They selected FIN Framework for its ability to simplify edge-to-cloud connectivity, enabling them to enhance their blackPAC™ offering with dynamic dashboards and to expand our R&D capabilities for future applications. FIN’s Edge2Cloud technology is included in BlackPAC™, solving remote access and site-to-cloud connectivity issues, and, in addition, provides comprehensive user and device management for large multi-site applications. Read more in our Blackstone Case Study.
J2 Innovations has partnered with Italian controls specialist Coster Group to embed FIN Framework into a new generation of plant and building control solutions. Coster Group’s “WebGarage” provides automation, management and supervision of medium-sized control systems for HVAC, water, and lighting. FIN's Edge2Cloud remote connectivity technology connects with thousands of sites and links these back to WebGarage. Read more in our Case Study here.
Edge2Cloud was released with the introduction of FIN 5 nearly five years ago and has now been used to connect tens of thousands of remote sites.
J2 Innovations' Edge2Cloud remote access solution provides high-performance remote access to edge project applications. This provides the entire toolset through a browser-based interface for not only end-user applications but for system configuration and programming applications as well. This is unique in the industry because oftentimes, applications - particularly programming and configuration apps are thick clients (loaded locally on technicians' laptops). In addition, the Edge2Cloud solution requires no IT support to configure firewall rules and eliminates the need for a third-party configuration and costs.
One of the most common objections to establishing remote connectivity is typically raised by the end user's IT department. The most common concern is what firewall ports need to be opened to allow remote access and what protocols/applications will be communicating on their local area network. Fortunately, J2's Edge2Cloud technology does not require any opening of firewall ports and uses standard HTTP and HTTPS for its web-based communications. Additionally, the entire communication tunnel from the end user's browser to the remote site is securely encrypted.
Another common request is from the end user's cybersecurity team, who need to understand both the architecture and the use cases for how the product interacts with their private network. This can be challenging to answer all of the technical and business details. J2 Innovations has responded to this need with both an IT manager's whitepaper as a high-level overview, as well as an IT Hardening Guide.
For more information, download our Edge2Cloud Whitepaper.
Topics from this blog: Cybersecurity FIN Edge2Cloud Smart Buildings Building Automation System Web Garage BAS blackPAC
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