Representatives of IBM, DEC, Intel, AT&T, Texas Instruments, Motorola, Novell and the Corporation for Open Systems meet today with people from the top six building controls manufacturers to discuss a possible new industry standard for intelligent buildings. The Open Protocols Symposium for buildings, at the Infomart in Dallas, is analogous to Manufacturing Automation Protocol meetings that promoted the network standard for factories and is being jointly sponsored by the Intelligent Buildings Institute, Washington, and Johnson Controls Inc of Milwaukee. Other buildings controls firms involved are Honeywell, Landis & Gyr Powers, Barber-Colman, Andover Controls and American Auto-Matrix. The market for intelligent wiring of buildings was estimated at $500m, and Honeywell reckons it will skyrocket over the next decade – and $500m puts it ahead this year of the $473m forecast for factory networks by 1990.
