Osram partners with facilities technology and management company for IoT

In an effort to further establish a place for lighting in the promising smart buildings market, Osram has teamed up with Austin, TX-based Facility Solutions Group (FSG), a specialist in facility services and technologies.

The companies said they “are joining forces to offer turnkey smart building IoT solutions to the commercial, industrial, and retail industries.”

FSG manages and designs facility systems including lighting, electrical, signage, and building controls, in many cases for national accounts. Its FSG Smart Buildings division provides controls, monitoring, and analysis for lighting, heating, refrigeration, and air quality in an Internet of Things (IoT) scheme.

As part of the collaborative partnership, FSG is offering Osram’s Encelium light management system and fixture-integrated sensors, controls, and components. The sensors include Osram’s SensiLUM chips, based on Zigbee radio technology.

Although Osram no longer offers its own office luminaires, it outfits other luminaires with sensors that collect environmental, occupancy, and lighting data. It sends that data to its Lightelligence cloud data system for analysis.

“This granular data about the space is then accessed by third-party analytics software developer partners offering SaaS [software as a service] for smart building applications,” the companies said.

FSG will combine Encelium and the Osram components into a lighting package that includes installation and managed services.

The partnership echoes Osram’s 7-month-old partnership with Boston-based software company Rifiniti, which sells software on a service basis aimed optimizing commercial space.

As LEDs Magazine has pointed out many times, it behooves the lighting industry to work closely with the property industry in the IoT. Property companies are well situated to be both partners and customers to the lighting industry.

Last fall, Osram began providing sensors and digital services independent of any lighting system to a couple of property companies in Lithuania, to help improve facilities management.

Property giant CBRE has taken a keen interest in the possibilities of smart lighting, having recently outfitted one of its own Amsterdam offices with smart technology from Gooee and Aurora.

MARK HALPER is a contributing editor for LEDs Magazine, and an energy, technology, and business journalist ([email protected]).

*Updated May 16, 2019 11:00 AM for company name correction.