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We first introduced the “horizontal architecture” concept in 2022, essentially formalizing a term the smart buildings community was already using. Horizontal architecture means splitting the building technology stack into distinct layers—device, network, data, and application—with open interfaces between them.
The appeal is better resilience and less vendor lock-in: instead of buying everything from a single OEM, an owner can mix and match the best solutions at each layer. Over the years, we’ve seen forward-thinking owners like Google, Dexus, and QuadReal, among many others, pursue this path.
However, this approach hasn’t been without its obstacles. For example, until recently, there were only a handful of independent data layer (IDL) providers, making it hard to find mature solutions to unify building systems. Today that’s changed—there are now 20+ such vendors in the Nexus Marketplace, many around for 5+ years.
Another hurdle was procurement: it’s tough to get funding for “infrastructure” projects that don’t immediately deliver tangible outcomes on their own. That’s also changed—there are 60+ vendors who bundle data and application layers together to drive outcomes and justify the investment.
But the biggest barrier was human resources. A horizontal architecture historically required in-house operational technology (OT) expertise that most building owners simply don’t have. It wasn’t turnkey. If you were used to buying everything from a single OEM with “one neck to choke,” switching to a multi-vendor horizontal stack meant engaging different specialists at each layer and getting them all to work together.
As Neeve’s Chief Product Officer Cory Clarke put it, “everyone has light resources on OT,” meaning even large portfolios tend to have very small OT teams. If you try to lean on the enterprise IT department instead, they’ll charge an arm and a leg—and still lack the nuanced expertise to manage building systems.
The good news is that the market is evolving to address this last obstacle. New solutions are aiming to give building owners the benefits of a horizontal architecture (more choice, flexibility, and resilience) while minimizing the burden on their thinly stretched teams.
As we see it, the big challenge for strapped OT departments is how to handle the edge compute and network pieces of the horizontal stack. In this context, edge compute refers to on-site computing that interfaces between the building’s devices (controllers, sensors, equipment) and the cloud-based data and application layers. It’s the glue that runs local applications, performs protocol translation, buffers data, and executes any logic that needs to live on-premises. The network layer connects those devices and edge machines to each other and to the cloud securely—routing the right data to the right place and enforcing security along the way. (Learn more in the Buyer’s Guide to the Network Layer)
Option 0 was to build all this yourself with internal staff, but that’s happening less and less given limited resources. In this article, we’ll explore how the marketplace is evolving to balance openness with simplicity and lower the skills and effort required to deploy modern smart building tech.
One path is for your existing building automation OEMs to meet you halfway. We’ve recently seen a large building owner frame an RFP as a competition between OEMs (who promise an integrated, do-it-all solution) and collections of specialized startups (each best-in-class at one layer or application).
That kind of demand signal hasn’t gone unnoticed by the major OEMs. Rather than staying stagnant, some are adapting their decades-old vertical offerings to take on a more open and flexible approach.
Acuity, through its brands within the Intelligent Spaces segment, is a notable example. “Intelligent Spaces” features Distech Controls, a leading provider of controllers, sensors, and refrigeration controls, plus Atrius, which provides cloud software applications and a data layer platform. Solutions from the two brands are coming together into what Eugene Mazo, GM of Atrius, calls an “edge with cloud” architecture.
Mazo contrasts this with the typical “edge to cloud” setup many organizations have today. With a conventional edge-to-cloud approach, you end up layering separate solutions on top of each other—each system feeding data to the next. “You end up with different user interfaces, inconsistent security, duplicative processing… it becomes a bit of a Frankenstein,” Mazo told us. In other words, device and data management feel like a fragmented mess because no two systems can work together in unison.
In Acuity’s “edge-with-cloud” approach, by contrast, what were once fragmented pieces are brought together through a single platform that manages, processes, and stores information from any system within a space, regardless of provider. Device management and operational data capabilities are united, creating a seamless experience where processes run at the layer they’re best suited for. For example, life-safety or real-time control logic runs locally on the controllers, while analytics and data storage live in the cloud. The boundaries are clearly defined, making the overall system more efficient.
Most importantly, the user experience and security are consistent. From an operator’s perspective, it should look like one system. “It all looks the same, and you shouldn’t care what part of this is running at the edge or what part is running in the cloud,” Mazo said.
Mazo explained that this “edge with cloud” concept is essentially the modern evolution of the full-stack solutions OEMs have provided for decades. The difference now is an intent to keep the layers more flexible and modular. Acuity’s existing portfolio of controllers, lighting, sensors, and applications provides the business a real-life environment to deploy this approach, but their ambition doesn’t stop there.
“We’re not trying to do [this] just for us and just for our own stack… we are trying to build it in such a way that this consistency can be applied to other edge hardware manufacturers [and] other applications upstream,” Mazo noted. To that end, they’ve built a cloud data layer (the Atrius DataLab platform) intended to integrate not only Acuity’s own devices but also other manufacturers’ devices. In addition, they offer a suite of applications, including those for building management and energy analytics. If an owner prefers, they can layer different third-party software on top of the data platform instead of using Acuity’s apps.
From a building owner’s perspective, this option preserves the familiar “one-stop shop” simplicity—you are still largely buying from one vendor who takes end-to-end responsibility. At the same time, you get a more modern, flexible architecture under the hood.
Another emerging option is to leverage tools that make a horizontal stack feel more like managing IT infrastructure. In other words, treat the edge compute and networking layer as a service that your internal team can handle using cloud-based software (similar to what they use for enterprise IT systems).
Over the last few years, several cloud-managed edge platforms have popped up aiming to simplify OT deployments. These can be thought of as the OT equivalent of what AWS did for corporate data centers—providing ready-made building blocks so you don’t have to set up and manage everything yourself.
Consider what typically happens today: in many buildings, every new “smart” system comes with its own gateway device or server. Want fault detection and diagnostics? Vendor X installs a PC in your closet. Adding a new lighting control system? Vendor Y drops in another box.
Neeve’s Cory Clarke described it this way: every new vendor “comes in and drops a PC in the building's server cabinet, or on a desktop somewhere, and then eventually you have a stack of unmanaged PCs. Every feature you want is another PC.” It’s a headache for your IT/OT staff to manage.
A better approach is to consolidate those workloads onto a single cloud-managed edge platform that can run many applications. If you can do that, you drastically reduce overhead: fewer boxes to install, fewer things to firewall and keep updated, fewer points of failure.
This is exactly what OT Infrastructure as a Service solutions like Neeve, Tosibox, and JCI’s Tempered Networks aim to do. They provide converged edge hardware and software to manage it, so that instead of many ad-hoc PCs you have one unified edge device and the tools to manage it.
Clarke stresses the need for secure remote connectivity out of the box. A key Neeve feature is SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Networking), which basically extends a secure network from the building to the cloud. This means all your edge devices can securely “phone home” to a central cloud, and the cloud to “phone” the edge devices, without a lot of custom network configuration.
SD-WAN lets you “take the network in the building and extend it to the cloud... it makes it all one continuum”. In short, these platforms blur the line between edge and cloud, making a bunch of distributed OT devices feel like one centrally managed system and reducing the overhead needed to manage them. This also means that owners and operators can progressively move systems to the cloud, without major network and application restructuring.
Neeve provides an edge gateway device per building that can run multiple OT applications at once. Each device also establishes a secure tunnel to a cloud management portal, where your team can monitor it, push updates, and deploy new apps remotely.
Clarke from Neeve told us their goal is to allow one box to handle many outcomes. This reduces the time and effort to stand up new capabilities. One Neeve customer—a small OT team led by a large North American REIT—reportedly achieved a 75% reduction in deployment time for their smart building pilots by standardizing on a single edge platform.
Because so much of the heavy lifting (hardware installation, networking, security) was done upfront, each new software application became mostly a configuration task on the existing device, rather than a new on-site project. Another client, a Fortune 500 financial institution, took a similar approach: they ran a portfolio-wide analytics application on Neeve gateways in all their buildings, eliminating dozens of separate PCs and their associated costs.
It’s worth noting a couple of trade-offs here. You’re essentially standardizing on a third-party hardware/software combo for your building infrastructure. Ideally, that platform remains neutral (you can run any application on it), but you are placing a strategic bet on that provider for a critical piece of the puzzle. Neeve’s approach has been to adopt open standards such as Docker, giving customers portability, and build a long list of partners who can be deployed on their box.
Second, your team will still need to manage it—just much less than if it were DIY. These tools are designed to be user-friendly, but someone in your organization, either on the OT side or the IT side, will need to own tasks such as onboarding new users and updating firmware. That’s far less work than wrangling dozens of siloed systems, but it isn’t zero. The upside is you retain a lot of flexibility: you can choose best-of-breed apps and deploy them as containers or VMs on the edge, mix and match solutions, and avoid being tied to any single device, application, or data layer vendor.
In a way, this option gives you a horizontal architecture “kit” to operate yourself, rather than a fully finished product delivered by one vendor.
The third option for resource-strapped owners is essentially to outsource the problem to a specialist. If Option 2 is “do it yourself with OT specific tools,” Option 3 is “have someone do it for you as a service.” A crop of vendors is offering to handle key parts of the horizontal stack on your behalf, bundling hardware, software, and ongoing support into a subscription.
For example, ACE IoT Solutions provides an independent data layer platform and the edge computing to go with it, delivered as a fully managed service. ACE will ship their edge device to your building, integrate it with your systems, and then continuously manage that data layer for you under a subscription model.
For building owners who have pursued Option 2 (described above) and have deployed a platform from a vendor such as Neeve or have internal IT resources willing to support the infrastructure, ACE provides a software-only image that can be deployed directly on existing OT infrastructure without a separate gateway.
Andrew Rodgers, co-founder of ACE, explained their philosophy to us: “Hourly MSI contracts cannot scale to deliver the efficiency and comfort the market demands,” he said. Hiring a systems integrator to build a horizontal stack isn’t a transformative change if you’re still stuck in an endless time-and-materials loop. ACE’s model is to move those services to a more productized footing—provide the core infrastructure (edge hardware + cloud platform) as a product with easy-to-use DIY tools for initiating equipment discovery or running a scan, and then layer expert support on top as a fixed, transparent monthly fee.
“It makes a lot more sense to pay a monthly fee for managing a piece of hardware and delivering an application,” Rodgers said, rather than constantly paying for bespoke integration labor. Engaging a firm like ACE is akin to getting a fractional OT manager along with a ready-to-go tech stack. You get hardware that is similar in capability to what Option 2 offers (ACE’s device can run multiple applications, do protocol translation, buffer data, etc., and their cloud platform provides a unified data layer and integration hub). But you’re not expected to operate it yourself day-to-day—that’s part of the service.
ACE’s team will monitor the data flows, ensure connections stay healthy, troubleshoot issues, and so on. Your internal facilities, energy management, and IT staff can then focus on using the data and applications to drive outcomes, rather than worrying about how the plumbing works. This approach is especially appealing to smaller portfolios or organizations where dedicating even one full-time person to OT systems isn’t feasible.
To illustrate, Rodgers shared a story of a client building where a network glitch was causing data dropouts; the controls contractor said it wasn’t their problem and IT was stumped, but because ACE was managing the stack they were able to quickly troubleshoot and fix the issue. In that scenario, having a partner responsible for the whole system prevented a lot of finger-pointing. Technology alone doesn’t solve operational gaps—there’s a people and process element.
Another player with this approach is Montgomery Technologies, with its “Intelligent Riser” offering. They provide a fully managed base-building network for OT systems. For a monthly fee, Montgomery will install and manage all the necessary network hardware (switches, routers, cabling, etc.) to connect your building systems, and they provide continuous remote monitoring and support.
The building owner retains ownership of the network gear, but Montgomery takes responsibility for designing and securing it, and for making sure all the systems (BAS, lighting, meters, access control, etc.) can communicate as needed. It’s a fractional network manager service. They fill the gap between device and data layers by standing up an enterprise-grade network dedicated to building systems. For owners, this means no more worrying about whether your controls vendor stuck their device on an insecure backdoor connection, or how to set up VLANs and VPNs for each new proptech system that comes along—it’s handled.
The benefit of these managed approaches is clear: you get the outcomes (connected, data-rich, cyber-secure buildings) without having to maintain a large specialized staff. The providers bring deep expertise and standardized processes that individual owners would struggle to develop on their own. For example, Montgomery’s team follows rigorous change-management and documentation procedures that far exceed what most single portfolios could ever create. By subscribing to their service, a mid-size owner essentially gets a professionally run OT network that might rival what a Fortune 100 company would implement—at a fraction of the cost.
Of course, the trade-off here is trust and dependency. It’s important to choose a partner with a philosophy that aligns with your interests (for instance, ACE emphasizes using open-source and common tools under the hood so clients aren’t trapped in a proprietary ecosystem). It’s not a silver bullet, but when executed well, this approach can dramatically reduce complexity for the owner.
The rise of these three approaches—OEMs unifying the stack from device to application layer, OT infrastructure platforms, and fully managed OT services—signals an important maturation in the smart buildings industry. The horizontal concept is no longer reserved for the Googles of the world with their own smart buildings program management teams. Even owners with limited internal resources now have viable pathways to get a more resilient tech stack in place.
Each option comes with its own balance of simplicity vs. flexibility. Evolved OEM stacks give you tight integration and ease of use. Infrastructure-as-a-Service tools give maximum choice and control, but assume you have (or can develop) a bit of in-house capability to use them. Managed services offload the heavy lifting entirely and deliver turnkey results, though you have to rely on the provider and trust their approach.
No solution is magic—owners must understand their own capabilities and pick the approach that best addresses their needs.
The fact that even resource-strapped teams can now pursue a horizontal architecture shows how far the ecosystem has come. The community’s vision is getting closer to reality—one layer at a time.
We first introduced the “horizontal architecture” concept in 2022, essentially formalizing a term the smart buildings community was already using. Horizontal architecture means splitting the building technology stack into distinct layers—device, network, data, and application—with open interfaces between them.
The appeal is better resilience and less vendor lock-in: instead of buying everything from a single OEM, an owner can mix and match the best solutions at each layer. Over the years, we’ve seen forward-thinking owners like Google, Dexus, and QuadReal, among many others, pursue this path.
However, this approach hasn’t been without its obstacles. For example, until recently, there were only a handful of independent data layer (IDL) providers, making it hard to find mature solutions to unify building systems. Today that’s changed—there are now 20+ such vendors in the Nexus Marketplace, many around for 5+ years.
Another hurdle was procurement: it’s tough to get funding for “infrastructure” projects that don’t immediately deliver tangible outcomes on their own. That’s also changed—there are 60+ vendors who bundle data and application layers together to drive outcomes and justify the investment.
But the biggest barrier was human resources. A horizontal architecture historically required in-house operational technology (OT) expertise that most building owners simply don’t have. It wasn’t turnkey. If you were used to buying everything from a single OEM with “one neck to choke,” switching to a multi-vendor horizontal stack meant engaging different specialists at each layer and getting them all to work together.
As Neeve’s Chief Product Officer Cory Clarke put it, “everyone has light resources on OT,” meaning even large portfolios tend to have very small OT teams. If you try to lean on the enterprise IT department instead, they’ll charge an arm and a leg—and still lack the nuanced expertise to manage building systems.
The good news is that the market is evolving to address this last obstacle. New solutions are aiming to give building owners the benefits of a horizontal architecture (more choice, flexibility, and resilience) while minimizing the burden on their thinly stretched teams.
As we see it, the big challenge for strapped OT departments is how to handle the edge compute and network pieces of the horizontal stack. In this context, edge compute refers to on-site computing that interfaces between the building’s devices (controllers, sensors, equipment) and the cloud-based data and application layers. It’s the glue that runs local applications, performs protocol translation, buffers data, and executes any logic that needs to live on-premises. The network layer connects those devices and edge machines to each other and to the cloud securely—routing the right data to the right place and enforcing security along the way. (Learn more in the Buyer’s Guide to the Network Layer)
Option 0 was to build all this yourself with internal staff, but that’s happening less and less given limited resources. In this article, we’ll explore how the marketplace is evolving to balance openness with simplicity and lower the skills and effort required to deploy modern smart building tech.
One path is for your existing building automation OEMs to meet you halfway. We’ve recently seen a large building owner frame an RFP as a competition between OEMs (who promise an integrated, do-it-all solution) and collections of specialized startups (each best-in-class at one layer or application).
That kind of demand signal hasn’t gone unnoticed by the major OEMs. Rather than staying stagnant, some are adapting their decades-old vertical offerings to take on a more open and flexible approach.
Acuity, through its brands within the Intelligent Spaces segment, is a notable example. “Intelligent Spaces” features Distech Controls, a leading provider of controllers, sensors, and refrigeration controls, plus Atrius, which provides cloud software applications and a data layer platform. Solutions from the two brands are coming together into what Eugene Mazo, GM of Atrius, calls an “edge with cloud” architecture.
Mazo contrasts this with the typical “edge to cloud” setup many organizations have today. With a conventional edge-to-cloud approach, you end up layering separate solutions on top of each other—each system feeding data to the next. “You end up with different user interfaces, inconsistent security, duplicative processing… it becomes a bit of a Frankenstein,” Mazo told us. In other words, device and data management feel like a fragmented mess because no two systems can work together in unison.
In Acuity’s “edge-with-cloud” approach, by contrast, what were once fragmented pieces are brought together through a single platform that manages, processes, and stores information from any system within a space, regardless of provider. Device management and operational data capabilities are united, creating a seamless experience where processes run at the layer they’re best suited for. For example, life-safety or real-time control logic runs locally on the controllers, while analytics and data storage live in the cloud. The boundaries are clearly defined, making the overall system more efficient.
Most importantly, the user experience and security are consistent. From an operator’s perspective, it should look like one system. “It all looks the same, and you shouldn’t care what part of this is running at the edge or what part is running in the cloud,” Mazo said.
Mazo explained that this “edge with cloud” concept is essentially the modern evolution of the full-stack solutions OEMs have provided for decades. The difference now is an intent to keep the layers more flexible and modular. Acuity’s existing portfolio of controllers, lighting, sensors, and applications provides the business a real-life environment to deploy this approach, but their ambition doesn’t stop there.
“We’re not trying to do [this] just for us and just for our own stack… we are trying to build it in such a way that this consistency can be applied to other edge hardware manufacturers [and] other applications upstream,” Mazo noted. To that end, they’ve built a cloud data layer (the Atrius DataLab platform) intended to integrate not only Acuity’s own devices but also other manufacturers’ devices. In addition, they offer a suite of applications, including those for building management and energy analytics. If an owner prefers, they can layer different third-party software on top of the data platform instead of using Acuity’s apps.
From a building owner’s perspective, this option preserves the familiar “one-stop shop” simplicity—you are still largely buying from one vendor who takes end-to-end responsibility. At the same time, you get a more modern, flexible architecture under the hood.
Another emerging option is to leverage tools that make a horizontal stack feel more like managing IT infrastructure. In other words, treat the edge compute and networking layer as a service that your internal team can handle using cloud-based software (similar to what they use for enterprise IT systems).
Over the last few years, several cloud-managed edge platforms have popped up aiming to simplify OT deployments. These can be thought of as the OT equivalent of what AWS did for corporate data centers—providing ready-made building blocks so you don’t have to set up and manage everything yourself.
Consider what typically happens today: in many buildings, every new “smart” system comes with its own gateway device or server. Want fault detection and diagnostics? Vendor X installs a PC in your closet. Adding a new lighting control system? Vendor Y drops in another box.
Neeve’s Cory Clarke described it this way: every new vendor “comes in and drops a PC in the building's server cabinet, or on a desktop somewhere, and then eventually you have a stack of unmanaged PCs. Every feature you want is another PC.” It’s a headache for your IT/OT staff to manage.
A better approach is to consolidate those workloads onto a single cloud-managed edge platform that can run many applications. If you can do that, you drastically reduce overhead: fewer boxes to install, fewer things to firewall and keep updated, fewer points of failure.
This is exactly what OT Infrastructure as a Service solutions like Neeve, Tosibox, and JCI’s Tempered Networks aim to do. They provide converged edge hardware and software to manage it, so that instead of many ad-hoc PCs you have one unified edge device and the tools to manage it.
Clarke stresses the need for secure remote connectivity out of the box. A key Neeve feature is SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Networking), which basically extends a secure network from the building to the cloud. This means all your edge devices can securely “phone home” to a central cloud, and the cloud to “phone” the edge devices, without a lot of custom network configuration.
SD-WAN lets you “take the network in the building and extend it to the cloud... it makes it all one continuum”. In short, these platforms blur the line between edge and cloud, making a bunch of distributed OT devices feel like one centrally managed system and reducing the overhead needed to manage them. This also means that owners and operators can progressively move systems to the cloud, without major network and application restructuring.
Neeve provides an edge gateway device per building that can run multiple OT applications at once. Each device also establishes a secure tunnel to a cloud management portal, where your team can monitor it, push updates, and deploy new apps remotely.
Clarke from Neeve told us their goal is to allow one box to handle many outcomes. This reduces the time and effort to stand up new capabilities. One Neeve customer—a small OT team led by a large North American REIT—reportedly achieved a 75% reduction in deployment time for their smart building pilots by standardizing on a single edge platform.
Because so much of the heavy lifting (hardware installation, networking, security) was done upfront, each new software application became mostly a configuration task on the existing device, rather than a new on-site project. Another client, a Fortune 500 financial institution, took a similar approach: they ran a portfolio-wide analytics application on Neeve gateways in all their buildings, eliminating dozens of separate PCs and their associated costs.
It’s worth noting a couple of trade-offs here. You’re essentially standardizing on a third-party hardware/software combo for your building infrastructure. Ideally, that platform remains neutral (you can run any application on it), but you are placing a strategic bet on that provider for a critical piece of the puzzle. Neeve’s approach has been to adopt open standards such as Docker, giving customers portability, and build a long list of partners who can be deployed on their box.
Second, your team will still need to manage it—just much less than if it were DIY. These tools are designed to be user-friendly, but someone in your organization, either on the OT side or the IT side, will need to own tasks such as onboarding new users and updating firmware. That’s far less work than wrangling dozens of siloed systems, but it isn’t zero. The upside is you retain a lot of flexibility: you can choose best-of-breed apps and deploy them as containers or VMs on the edge, mix and match solutions, and avoid being tied to any single device, application, or data layer vendor.
In a way, this option gives you a horizontal architecture “kit” to operate yourself, rather than a fully finished product delivered by one vendor.
The third option for resource-strapped owners is essentially to outsource the problem to a specialist. If Option 2 is “do it yourself with OT specific tools,” Option 3 is “have someone do it for you as a service.” A crop of vendors is offering to handle key parts of the horizontal stack on your behalf, bundling hardware, software, and ongoing support into a subscription.
For example, ACE IoT Solutions provides an independent data layer platform and the edge computing to go with it, delivered as a fully managed service. ACE will ship their edge device to your building, integrate it with your systems, and then continuously manage that data layer for you under a subscription model.
For building owners who have pursued Option 2 (described above) and have deployed a platform from a vendor such as Neeve or have internal IT resources willing to support the infrastructure, ACE provides a software-only image that can be deployed directly on existing OT infrastructure without a separate gateway.
Andrew Rodgers, co-founder of ACE, explained their philosophy to us: “Hourly MSI contracts cannot scale to deliver the efficiency and comfort the market demands,” he said. Hiring a systems integrator to build a horizontal stack isn’t a transformative change if you’re still stuck in an endless time-and-materials loop. ACE’s model is to move those services to a more productized footing—provide the core infrastructure (edge hardware + cloud platform) as a product with easy-to-use DIY tools for initiating equipment discovery or running a scan, and then layer expert support on top as a fixed, transparent monthly fee.
“It makes a lot more sense to pay a monthly fee for managing a piece of hardware and delivering an application,” Rodgers said, rather than constantly paying for bespoke integration labor. Engaging a firm like ACE is akin to getting a fractional OT manager along with a ready-to-go tech stack. You get hardware that is similar in capability to what Option 2 offers (ACE’s device can run multiple applications, do protocol translation, buffer data, etc., and their cloud platform provides a unified data layer and integration hub). But you’re not expected to operate it yourself day-to-day—that’s part of the service.
ACE’s team will monitor the data flows, ensure connections stay healthy, troubleshoot issues, and so on. Your internal facilities, energy management, and IT staff can then focus on using the data and applications to drive outcomes, rather than worrying about how the plumbing works. This approach is especially appealing to smaller portfolios or organizations where dedicating even one full-time person to OT systems isn’t feasible.
To illustrate, Rodgers shared a story of a client building where a network glitch was causing data dropouts; the controls contractor said it wasn’t their problem and IT was stumped, but because ACE was managing the stack they were able to quickly troubleshoot and fix the issue. In that scenario, having a partner responsible for the whole system prevented a lot of finger-pointing. Technology alone doesn’t solve operational gaps—there’s a people and process element.
Another player with this approach is Montgomery Technologies, with its “Intelligent Riser” offering. They provide a fully managed base-building network for OT systems. For a monthly fee, Montgomery will install and manage all the necessary network hardware (switches, routers, cabling, etc.) to connect your building systems, and they provide continuous remote monitoring and support.
The building owner retains ownership of the network gear, but Montgomery takes responsibility for designing and securing it, and for making sure all the systems (BAS, lighting, meters, access control, etc.) can communicate as needed. It’s a fractional network manager service. They fill the gap between device and data layers by standing up an enterprise-grade network dedicated to building systems. For owners, this means no more worrying about whether your controls vendor stuck their device on an insecure backdoor connection, or how to set up VLANs and VPNs for each new proptech system that comes along—it’s handled.
The benefit of these managed approaches is clear: you get the outcomes (connected, data-rich, cyber-secure buildings) without having to maintain a large specialized staff. The providers bring deep expertise and standardized processes that individual owners would struggle to develop on their own. For example, Montgomery’s team follows rigorous change-management and documentation procedures that far exceed what most single portfolios could ever create. By subscribing to their service, a mid-size owner essentially gets a professionally run OT network that might rival what a Fortune 100 company would implement—at a fraction of the cost.
Of course, the trade-off here is trust and dependency. It’s important to choose a partner with a philosophy that aligns with your interests (for instance, ACE emphasizes using open-source and common tools under the hood so clients aren’t trapped in a proprietary ecosystem). It’s not a silver bullet, but when executed well, this approach can dramatically reduce complexity for the owner.
The rise of these three approaches—OEMs unifying the stack from device to application layer, OT infrastructure platforms, and fully managed OT services—signals an important maturation in the smart buildings industry. The horizontal concept is no longer reserved for the Googles of the world with their own smart buildings program management teams. Even owners with limited internal resources now have viable pathways to get a more resilient tech stack in place.
Each option comes with its own balance of simplicity vs. flexibility. Evolved OEM stacks give you tight integration and ease of use. Infrastructure-as-a-Service tools give maximum choice and control, but assume you have (or can develop) a bit of in-house capability to use them. Managed services offload the heavy lifting entirely and deliver turnkey results, though you have to rely on the provider and trust their approach.
No solution is magic—owners must understand their own capabilities and pick the approach that best addresses their needs.
The fact that even resource-strapped teams can now pursue a horizontal architecture shows how far the ecosystem has come. The community’s vision is getting closer to reality—one layer at a time.
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