An industry wide initiative to create guidelines for sharing data and control across building management systems has been set up.
The guidelines, called the Open Building Information Xchange (Obix), employ xml/web based services to enable open systems capabilities and enhanced operations.

Obix has been set up by the Continental Automated Buildings Association (CABA) and an alliance of leaders from the building automation, hvac, security, IT and facility management industries.

The aim is to facilitate the exchange of information between intelligent buildings, and make systems integration a reality. The alliance's ultimate goal is to evolve the Obix guidelines into a standard protocol for building systems.

Ronald Zimmer, president and ceo of CABA says: "The knowledge and control Obix puts in the hands of facility managers gives the Obix guidelines the potential to become the standard of choice to unify operating data from diverse systems." For more information visit www.obix.org