This article includes analysis and insights from Futurum Research Senior Analyst, Sarah Wallace
The News: Honeywell (NYSE: HON), a global leader in fire and life safety, has launched the first tools from its new suite of Connected Life Safety Services (CLSS), an all-in-one cloud platform for fire safety systems. Honeywell’s CLSS suite of tools, built on the Honeywell Forge platform, enables fire technicians to minimize disruption, prove compliance and reduce time needed for design, installation, commissioning, inspection, maintenance and reporting of life safety systems. You can read more about Honeywell’s CLSS platform here.
Analyst Take: In today’s climate of the COVID-19 pandemic, when there is even more emphasis on workplace safety, this is a smart move by Honeywell, which already has its roots in building technology, materials, and safety. While this announcement reflects Honeywell’s roots in the industrial space, it yet again shows the company’s continued focus on bringing together more closely IT and Industrial technologies to benefit from modern IT architectures. This, in many ways, is the DNA of the Honeywell Forge platform.
The CLSS suite’s benefit is an agile environment that enables fire safety managers and administrators to monitor and make needed changes from anywhere. For example, facility managers and system integrators can monitor their systems and diagnose issues anytime remotely. The ultimate goal of Honeywell’s CLSS is to use a modernized, cloud-based approach to provide system integrators’ customers with insight into system problems before they occur.
In Honeywell’s CLSS announcement, the company states that this platform addresses the fire safety challenges of:
- Achieving more with fewer resources – many facility maintenance teams are working with reduced staff.
- Managing challenges of limited access to facilities due to shutdowns.
- Dealing effectively with safety incidents, where risks remain the same at any occupancy level.
At Futurum Research, we have been extensively covering digital transformation and Industrial IoT (IIoT). Honeywell’s CLSS tools catalyze digital transformation by supporting the automation of traditionally manual processes, which ultimately improves fire systems’ delivery time. This automation level also helps to eliminate errors that come with manual data entry throughout design, commission, and maintenance processes. In other words, the tools help to improve the delivery of on-time completion and the handover of a compliant system with the relevant reports, which drives efficiency and cost savings. Other appealing capabilities from the CLSS platform include remote real-time monitoring and troubleshooting, full alignment with mandated inspection and maintenance requirements, built-in cybersecurity provisions, and full backward compatibility with legacy systems.
As with any new solution announcement, it’s always good to have an existing customer testimonial. Firetron, the largest life safety systems company in Texas, is using already using the Honeywell CLSS platform to support compliance records for its customers. Meanwhile, the EDSB Group of Companies in the UK-based, which provides fire, security, electrical, mechanical, and building services, uses CLSS to monitor and test while easily adjusting settings according to customers’ requirements.
Currently, the CLSS tools are available globally via several Honeywell Fire brands, including Gent, NOTIFIER, and ESSER. As Honeywell has a long history with building and industrial safety, this platform seems like a logical step for the vendor. The timing is also right, as workplace safety is the laser focus of all employers right now. As much of these efforts are expedited, a platform that is agile, in the cloud, and allows for remote administration is just what companies need right now. Ensuring fire safety as simply as possible, is just what the market needs.
Futurum Research provides industry research and analysis. These columns are for educational purposes only and should not be considered in any way investment advice.
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