Solution profile
Enterprise solutions

Symphony ofSoftware Saves Millions
Microsoft and ICONICS Partner to Fine-tune Energy and Maintenance Systems
A small, covert team of engineers at Microsoft castaside suggestions that the company spend US$60 million
to turn its 500-acre headquarters into a smart campus toachieve energy savings and other efficiency gains. Instead,applying an “Internet of Things meets Big Data” approach,the team invented a data-driven software solution based
upon ICONICS COTS software that is slashing the costof operating the campus’ 125 buildings saving Microsoft
millions of dollars.
The application has been so successful that the company
and its partners are now helping building managers acrossthe world deploy the same solution. And with commercial
buildings consuming an estimated 40 percent of the world’s
total energy, the potential is huge.
Darrell Smith and his team have been working for
more than three years to unify an incongruent networkof sensors from different eras (think several decades ofdifferent sensor technology and dozens of manufacturers).
The software that he and his team built strings together
thousands of building sensors that track things like heaters,
air conditioners, fans, and lights – harvesting billions ofdata points per week. That data has given the team deep
insights, enabled better diagnostics, and has allowed forfar more intelligent decision making. A test run of theprogram in 13 Microsoft buildings has provided staggeringresults. Not only has Microsoft saved energy and millions
in maintenance and utility costs, but the company now is
hyper-aware of the way its buildings perform.
Today the campus spans 500 acres. There’s a soccer fieldand cricket pitch, miles of wooded walking paths – and14.9 million square feet of office space and labs that now
function as one interconnected system.
Until recently, Microsoft was using disparate building
management systems to manage 30,000 unconnected,
sensor-enabled pieces of equipment. Imagine a symphonyorchestra, but with every musician playing from different
sheet music. Then, imagine trying to conduct thatsymphony – to make sure the music was on tempo, in key,and starting and stopping as it should. Microsoft’s buildings
were experiencing data dissonance that would make theworks of Igor Stravinsky sound like a barbershop quartet.
This is the challenge faced by many in the Public sector.
Old legacy equipment is not perceived to be capable of trueenergy efficiency!
The question was raised “Do we rip and replace, or try
to reduce energy through technology?”“Give me a little data and I’ll tell you a little.
Give me a lot of data and I’ll save the world.”- Darrell Smith, Director of Facilities and Energy Microsoft

Solution profile
Enterprise solutions

Smith’s team created a pilot program in 13 of thebuildings on Microsoft’s Redmond campus. The teamdeveloped an “analytical blanket” based upon ICONICS
software to lie on top of the diverse systems used to manage
the buildings. The blanket of software enabled equipment
and buildings to talk to each other, and to provide a wealthof data to building managers.
The new tool got data out of the buildings – great
tidal waves of data that came cascading into the ROC,
telling engineers about everything from wasteful lighting
schedules to hugely inefficient (but up until then, silent andundetectable) battles being waged between air conditioners
and heaters to maintain temperatures.
Engineers are no longer climbing over rooftops,
inspecting pump rooms and peering above ceiling tiles,
no, engineers are now spending 95 percent of their time
doing engineering. Suddenly, the symphony of sensors was
not only following the conductor, its musicians were all
playing the same song. As buildings came online and data
poured in, it created what engineers called a “target-richenvironment” for problem solving.
They used to move from building to building, camping
out in each for two weeks at a time to inspect and tune it
top to bottom before moving on to the next. It would takethem five years to tune up all of the buildings on campus,
and then they’d start the process all over again. Their tuneups were making the buildings run more efficiently, saving
the company around $250,000 annually – but the new data
gold rush has helped them save six times that much!
ICONICS and its partners are looking to engage withany company, institution or person who is looking to driveenergy reductions through technology. We have a suiteof tools that can both scale to size and budget. ICONICS
promotes an international culture of innovation and is thereigning Microsoft Sustainability Partner of the Year. Thisaward recognizes software innovations built on the Microsoft
platform that help organizations, governments and cities
around the world reduce their impact on the environment.
For more information, please visit us at:
www.iconics.com

Microsoft’s Smart Campus

125 buildings with...
2,000,000 data points
500,000,000

data transactions
every 24 hours

Communicated throughan array of different

Protocols, Hardware,and Interfaces
Transforming raw data into

Actionable Information
Assimilating information from30,000pieces of equipment across campus

Analysed and compiled throughGraphics, Charts,and Trending Reports

48%of faults are corrected within

60 Seconds

This article and its images were excerpted and adapted from Jennifer
Warnick’s feature story “88 Acres: How Microsoft Quietly Built the City ofthe Future,” which was originally published at www.microsoft.com/stories.

Key features• Reduces energy consumption and costs• Extends the life of building assets• Drives labor efficiencies• Shrinks carbon footprints

Provides a forecasted energy savings of6-10%
Per Yearwith an implemenation paybackin less than 18 months
Improves technician efficiency with

32,300Work Orders
Per Quarter