They both stink, grow old and fall apart.

I had the wonderful pleasure of taking about 30 bags of decaying yard waste to the dump. I would say you haven't lived until you've smelled the sweet aura of decaying grass, but that would be a complete lie.

How did things get so bad? When I thought about it I realized I only produce 6 bags of grass per mowing, that means that I went 5 weeks without taking this grass to the compost dump.

So I was talking with a buddy of mine yesterday on Skype. He and I started discussing communication trunks and the best way to troubleshoot them.

There is nothing more frustrating and difficult then troubleshooting communication trunks in existing buildings.

Well, that's an attention grabber eh?

Unless you've been living under a rock the past couple days you've probably heard about the malware that's been plaguing Windows machines.

This new malware called "WannaCry" has been encrypting folks hard drives keeping them from accessing their data.

The reality is, ransomware (malware that locks up files until someone pays the hacker money) is nothing new.

So here we are. 8 weeks ago I started to take you on a journey through the wild and crazy world of systems integration.

I was on a live stream the morning I wrote this article and I was discussing my new book, with my pre-sale customers. A question popped up around data normalization, and data warehouses vs data lakes.

Up to this point, I’ve covered relatively simple integrations but what happens if you have a complicated integration one involving dozens if not hundreds of systems?

I remember the first time I did a very complicated integration.

I was using the OPC protocol to integrate building automation systems from several different data centers into a centralized reporting hub.

I remember it like it was yesterday... I was trying to get a new LON system tied into an existing building automation system and it was chaos.

I had broken every system integration rule on this project and the project was only a week old. In my defense I had yet to learn the process I am teaching you, I tend to have a "adventurous" personality...

In this post, I going to teach you how to perform a Gap analysis.

But before we get there, let's travel back to 2007 when I was a brand new technician...

Picture this, you are a newly hired service technician and you arrive at a customer site. Customer comes up to you and tells you that the air handling systems they ordered are ready to be pulled into the building automation system.

Every profession has their own secret language, and the world of building automation is no different.

In this post, I will help you to demystify the lingo of building automation by exposing the 5 most common terms in the building automation world.

This is article #3 in the Systems Integration series, and in this article, we are beginning to dive through the process of identifying the systems landscape. This process is critical to adequately assess the time, effort, and cost that each of our use cases will require. Up to this point, we have identified the difference between systems interfacing and integration, and we have identified our use case.