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Business Issues: Moving Towards Mass Market - Good News for All of Us! (3/8/2007)

By Neil Spence Jones, OpenHub

As readers of HiddenWires, we are pioneers in a vital and important industry. There are now real and exciting signs that we are moving towards mass market. This is great news for all of us. For many, it will mean that our commercial opportunities are about to expand significantly. Even for those of us focused on niche markets, the falling costs, developing infrastructures and the ever-increasing numbers of services becoming available, will allow us to offer a greater range of compelling options to our customers.

Smart homes - smart communities

A large and increasing range of smart equipment is becoming available for the home. Video and audio can be streamed around the house. The home environment can be managed to provide the appropriate levels of lighting and heating to each room. Information about utility usage can help manage costs. Door entry systems, cameras and movement sensors provide higher levels of security, and increasingly sophisticated tele-health and telecare equipment is being provided through local councils and health trusts.

Telecare equipment to enable older people to live safely in the comfort of their own home for longer.

The growing compliance with standards and open protocols, together with the development of open interfaces to proprietary systems, is making it easier to link all this equipment together. The same pieces of kit are able to perform a number of different functions, so that movement sensors, for instance, can be used for security, for automatic control of lighting and for telecare services supporting vulnerable people. The range of different applications within the home can be managed and controlled easily and simply. Control software can have a complete overview of what is happening around the home and so can make smarter decisions. User controls can be simplified, so that, for instance, one switch by the front door could be used to ensure that all windows and doors are locked, lights are either all switched off or a random pattern of lighting is switched on, security systems are alarmed and heating programs are set.

We can therefore define a smart home as a home where a range of smart equipment and applications are all linked together so that they function as part of a single system. The data coming from each sensor is shared to enable better overall management and single controls can manage a range of different functions.

Similarly, a smart community is a community where a number of smart homes are linked together to enable the delivery and easy management of common services. Services might include multichannel TV, local information services, educational applications and neighbourhood security. A smart community also provides the opportunity for the central management of utilities, leading to lower energy use and lower costs. Smart communities provide us with a new and important opportunity as they allow us to add value to smart homes by providing new applications using the same in-house equipment and infrastructure.

Moving towards mass market

As British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, said on 11th July 2007, "Through this decade and right up to 2020 I want us - in environmentally-friendly ways using principally brown-field land and building eco towns and villages - to meet housing need by building over a quarter of a million more homes than previously planned, a total by 2020 of 3 million new homes for families across the country."

I believe we are now approaching a tipping point. Housing is a key priority of the new Prime Minister, and we are in the middle of a major house-building boom. Falling costs, better-designed equipment and the simplification of controls are making smart homes much more a mass market product. In addition, customer expectations are growing, with the increasing use of broadband applications in the home and of applications such as Sky multiroom. The public sector is taking an increasing interest in this area both because of the range of services to the citizen that smart technology enables; and because of its increasingly important role in the drive to meet the new housing targets.

In response to this, developers are beginning to offer smart home options and are working with installers to develop integrated sales and marketing packages. Central Government is supporting two complementary initiatives to move things forward: The Application Home Initiative (TAHI) that is bringing together technology and service providers to create the market for applications and services into the smart home; and the Digital Access Provision forum, that is promoting guidelines for the installation of ducting and cabling in-home and on-estate to support the new applications. A number of fibre-to-the-home initiatives around the country have recently been announced. Momentum is building fast.

New approach needed

As we move towards the mass market, a different approach is required of us. Traditionally we have delivered unique, customised solutions for individual homes. However, this is uneconomic for the mass market. Mass market requires mass customisation, where a common infrastructure, open standards and open interfaces with proprietary systems will allow easy customisation for individual homes. We therefore need to start by designing and installing an open and future-proof infrastructure and then add on the applications demanded by the individual customer.

This is the right approach even for high-value new-build housing. Getting the infrastructure right will provide the flexibility to easily add new applications in the future, thus bringing ongoing opportunities to up-sell to existing customers.

A demonstration of the new approach The new approach is being demonstrated at the Building Research Establishment in Watford. The Building Research Establishment (BRE) is a former UK government establishment, now a private organisation that carries out research, consultancy and testing for the construction and built environment sectors in the United Kingdom.

At the heart of the BRE campus is the Innovation Park which enables the construction industry to showcase the latest innovations in construction. The Park features six demonstration houses, along with a section of a school building. Since its opening in June 2005 it has attracted over 18,000 visitors as well as VIP guests including HRH Prince of Wales, government ministers and civil servants.

Five of these buildings were constructed in preparation for the Offsite 2007 event held at BRE last month. Working in partnership with specialist installers and a range of smart equipment providers, OpenHub coordinated the provision of smart home technology into one of the homes, the Hanson EcoHouse.

Within the EcoHouse we installed cabling and controls designed to support both applications using open standards as well as those using proprietary protocols. The home features a range of smart technology from different manufacturers but managed easily together and merged seamlessly with wider community services.

A wall-mounted Ingenium colour touchscreen controls the lighting and provides a link to the door-entry system. It is also capable of controlling the heating and other home systems.

Tridium JACE 200 smart controller currently being used for energy monitoring and logging and capable of being connected to all of the installed equipment (heat pump, solar heating, lighting etc.) to provide integrated management of the home.

In addition, each home on the Innovation Park has been supplied with an ultra-high-bandwidth fibre connection to a Community Digital Management Centre. This not only provides a link to the Internet, but also allows the delivery of virtually unlimited broadband services within the connected estate, demonstrating a model for digitally-enabled, exciting new communities.

Services will include video on demand, telephony, home school links, and many other local services to catalyse the creation of, and ongoing support for, strong and cohesive local communities.

Plan of the six demonstration houses at BRE, connected via fibre to the OpenHub Community Digital Management Centre for delivering virtually unlimited broadband services within the connected estate.

The way forward

What is clear is that to exploit all of these opportunities, partnerships are the way forward. The success of the Hanson EcoHouse is due to a range of companies, co-ordinated by OpenHub, working together to make sure that the different systems and equipment could talk with each other and that the management of the whole system was easy for the resident.

OpenHub works with developers to design and implement the infrastructure, both in the home and on the estate, and to put together attractive smart technology options packages for home buyers. We work in both new-build and regeneration projects, and we have a particular interest in the delivery of smart community services. We are in the process of engaging with volume housing developers, BRE, and other key players to further develop the market. We would be glad to hear from any of you who would like to work with us on taking this forward.

To further improve our understanding of the opportunities opening up to all of us and identify the range of solutions available, we will be running a series of events in the autumn at BRE. We also plan to facilitate online discussion so that we can develop the way ahead together. For further information, please contact our Communications Manager Michael Mulquin at michael.mulquin@openhub.co.uk.

Neil Spence Jones is the CEO of OpenHub Ltd. OpenHub focuses on the delivery and management of smart community services to and around the home. It was founded in 2003 by a group of serial entrepreneurs who have set up a number of successful companies providing the electronics to manage data services to the home and educational markets.

www.openhub.co.uk