In today’s era of smart cities with exemplary IoT edifices like The Edge in Amsterdam and other multistorey structures, there still exist old infrastructures that lack basic air conditioning thermostats and building automation systems. While certain buildings exhibit some level of intelligence in the form of lighting and fire safety, operations staff and building managers in such properties have no real-time visibility into critical building systems. This makes it arduous for them to not only keep everything up and running, but also manage the space in a way that ensures businesses are operating productively. Addressing this specific issue, Urban.io, an emerging information and technology services startup headquartered in Australia, designs and develops industrial grade IoT devices purpose-built to get actionable and meaningful data from buildings, assets, and spaces into business systems at the lowest cost possible. Rob Cumming, founder and CEO of the company, notes, “The CIO working in conjunction with the Head of Property just needs visibility of around 20 key system endpoints in a building to know it is functioning optimally. Sounds simple, however, the real challenge is that they need to see that same small data set on a single application screen gathered from hundreds or even potentially thousands of locations within their portfolio that is scattered all over the country or the world.” He goes on to explain that the cost and effort to go out to your building locations and retrofit standard building automation technology and then connect it to a central monitoring platform is prohibitive, so many buildings have little or no connected technology to assist in operations.
Correspondingly, Urban.io’s Industrial rated, retrofit ready IoT devices are designed to fill that void and help business owners identify key building issues, decrease maintenance processes and operational costs, provide better visibility of critical asset health, reduce the frequency of planned maintenance tasks, and optimize utility consumption and space usage. Cumming continues, “Remember the long tail of commercial/industrial real estate, the branch office, the retail outlet, factory, warehouse, shed, pumping station, and all those remote sites in emerging markets. All of those problem locations that often house really important things for the business are now in reach.”
While devising the company’s product strategy, Cumming and his team focused on cost to be the prime factor behind certain buildings still lacking an apt building management system. “We targeted each driver of cost; purchase price, installation time, system commissioning, internet connectivity, enterprise integration and realized that we can provide a turnkey solution capable of identifying around 80 percent of the common problems faced by building owners, occupants, and maintenance personnel, and do it for around one-tenth of the price,” explains Cumming.
Correspondingly, Urban.io’s Industrial rated, retrofit ready IoT devices are designed to fill that void and help business owners identify key building issues, decrease maintenance processes and operational costs, provide better visibility of critical asset health, reduce the frequency of planned maintenance tasks, and optimize utility consumption and space usage. Cumming continues, “Remember the long tail of commercial/industrial real estate, the branch office, the retail outlet, factory, warehouse, shed, pumping station, and all those remote sites in emerging markets. All of those problem locations that often house really important things for the business are now in reach.”
While devising the company’s product strategy, Cumming and his team focused on cost to be the prime factor behind certain buildings still lacking an apt building management system. “We targeted each driver of cost; purchase price, installation time, system commissioning, internet connectivity, enterprise integration and realized that we can provide a turnkey solution capable of identifying around 80 percent of the common problems faced by building owners, occupants, and maintenance personnel, and do it for around one-tenth of the price,” explains Cumming.
It is our simplified approach and laser focus on making the lowest cost per point to get industrial grade building data instantly available in the cloud that set Urban.io’s offerings apart in the field
So, Urban.io came up with a solution that combines simple (single-purpose) sensors and gateway device hardware with a cloud administration platform and application programming interfaces to provide real-time visibility and remote monitoring of critical assets. It is this simplified approach and focus on making data instantly available in the cloud that set Urban.io’s offerings apart in the field. Furthermore, simplicity in installation, flexibility, and robustness of the devices add on as the company’s differentiating factors.
Urban.io has adopted a vendor-agnostic approach when working with Corporations developing their own internal IoT platform, where it partners with all major players in the Enterprise IoT solutions landscape. “We embrace the idea of taking data from our devices and putting it into your cloud for more advanced ML and analytics purposes. The reality is that no IoT device company can satisfy all needs for sensing, however, we aim to be the easiest and most flexible supplier to work with,” mentions Cumming. The company also comes up with a shared roadmap for new product ideas and prototypes are distributed among selected clients to gather real-world feedback before designs are finalized for full-scale manufacturing.
The company’s prowess is evident in the way it has helped numerous enterprises with their building management challenges. One success story involves a leading home retailer that experienced constant breakdowns with lifts and escalators, leaving parts of stores with limited access for several days until a repair technician could attend to it. “This delay greatly impacted the client’s sales and caused customer and staff frustration,” adds Cumming. Urban.io installed one sensor in each lift and escalator across the retailer’s premise. These sensors provide ‘back-to-base remote monitoring’ for around $1.50 per day including the cost of hardware and installation. “Our involvement ultimately accelerated the process for onsite technician response and enabled a critical failure to be fixed the same day,” says Cumming.
Urban.io is en route to launching additional sensors it has developed in conjunction with industry specialists in the fields of HVAC (large-scale air-conditioning) and plumbing/sewers to reduce the need for repetitive air-filter inspections and grease traps respectively. Urban.io is working in partnership with global distribution giant TechData Corporation to cultivate an ecosystem of IoT reseller partners in Australia, New Zealand, South East Asia, and the UK
