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Information technology has been rapidly evolving resulting in development of systems that can measure, evaluate, and respond to change. This ability to respond and also control change has sparked developments in the way we design our physical environment, and more recently the buildings in which we work. The BPO and tech wave has given impetus to this trend in India. Thus, we are witnessing significant increase in 'intelligent buildings'-buildings that incorporate information technology, communication systems, and mechanical systems, making them more comfortable, secure, productive, and cost effective.

In India, structured cabling has picked up well. Almost all of the new IT parks are on structured cabling, even small users and SOHOs are using it. With rising awareness and low-cost PCs coming in the market; the networking concept would certainly get a boost.

What is a Smart Building?
An intelligent building is one equipped with a robust telecommunications infrastructure, allowing for more efficient use of resources and increasing the comfort and security of its occupants. An intelligent building provides these benefits through automated control systems such as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC); fire safety; security; energy/lighting management; and other building management systems. For example, in the case of a fire, the fire alarm communicates with the security system to unlock the doors. The alarm will also communicate with the HVAC system to regulate airflow and prevent the fire from spreading.

Smart buildings are not a new concept in India. The CMC building at Bandra Kurla Complex, Mumbai was one of the smart buildings that came up in 1990s. However, it was a new concept at that time, and not too many such buildings are noticed. Initial followers were the IT companies while now the IT parks have taken it up. This concept is on the rise amongst all corporates and the government sector.

On the enterprise front, all of them have deployed structured cabling. Even the government enterprises have started to use them for all their offices, whereas while only a few offices earlier were on a LAN. The introduction of computers and various peripherals in the workplace has increased indoor clutter. Electrical and telecommunications facilities in office buildings are under pressure to satisfy the demand of rapid growth of computer and networking technologies. This would impact worker productivity.

So, how can we evolve our existing buildings to smart buildings?

The Transformation
Conventional buildings can be transformed into intelligent ones by installing a single structured cabling network. Most buildings have disparate cabling with different designs and administration methods, which leads to inefficiency and system failures. The installation of a structured cabling system turns the conventional building into an intelligent one.

The use of structured cabling has grown in the last three years. All new building projects usually have structured cabling. Even the old ones have started to rip off their old cabling and adopt structured cabling standards for voice communication as well.

Data centers are examples of buildings which factor in the networking and computing technologies to make their buildings intelligent and futuristic. But not all buildings are built on the premise of data centers but can still be converted to smart buildings.

The deployment in India can be termed as 'growing'. We still have enterprises, especially in the government sector, that have yet to migrate to using of computers and networking these to share data within and across the enterprise.

Structured cabling has played a key role in getting these rich media, bandwidth concerted applications closer to the user community. A well defined structured cabling system can be the arteries and veins of the network. With convergence and ever increasing bandwidth capacity, voice, data and video are coming closer together as new technologies develop. Rich media and bandwidth-hungry applications depend on the cabling system that provides this communications capability.

Making Business Sense
Though in India we have not experienced a significant transformation to smart buildings, CIOs of various enterprises have identified the need. Ashish Dandekar, Enterprise Management, NSE.IT opines, "buildings represent a large, long-term investment that must make good business sense and be shielded from obsolescence in today's fast-paced business environment. When we had gone about building our data center in early 2000, we designed meticulously, factoring in future scalability and redundancy." It's important to plan a building in advance for the roadmap on IT infrastructure, physical security, building strength, to mitigate risks of fire, water, utilities, failures, etc. It not easy to haul old cables and lay new ones as first they come with a life for 15 years and moreover, it involves lot of construction, internally and externally, to lay a fresh set of cables.

A structured cable network must be designed with scalable overlay capacity for future requirements.

Business requirements such as communicating data quickly and reliably; ability to exercise greater control over the work environment and improve productivity and cost-effectiveness make structured cabling an imperative business aspect.

Cabling is at the heart of every network, with communication and fast and accurate delivery of information among an organization's most important business priorities. If the wrong cabling installation is chosen, the consequences can seriously affect an organization's bottom line. With installations lasting from 10 to 20 years, planning for future applications is pivotal in this process. As a result, IT requirements should always be viewed in the context of the overall business strategy in order to balance present and future network needs with overall organizational goals.

Minu Sirsalewala