Johnson Controls has expanded remarkably since Professor Warren Johnson founded the company in 1885 to manufacture his breakthrough invention: the electric room thermostat. Since its start, Milwaukee-based Johnson Controls has grown into a multibillion-dollar corporation, with worldwide leadership in two businesses: automotive systems and building controls.

Automakers outsource their interior system requirements to Johnson Controls to maximize quality and reduce costs. The company not only manufactures automotive interior systems; it designs, engineers, integrates, and delivers them globally. Likewise, the owners and managers of commercial, institutional, and government buildings worldwide turn to Johnson Controls to maximize comfort, productivity, safety, and energy efficiency. The company engineers, manufactures, and installs control systems that automate a building's heating, ventilating, and air conditioning, as well as its lighting and fire safety equipment.

It's in this latter area that the company is a pioneer adopter of Web services. Byron Hill is Johnson Control's director of systems and technology. He's using Web services to consolidate and streamline building management tasks.

Our goal is to make the environment comfortable, provide for lighting, and so on. We essentially design systems and equipment that help manage a building's environment. We're also a part of the construction process and retrofit process in terms of how those projects get put together and how they're managed, even when it's not our content. We also know the problems that the construction industry and owners have in designing and integrating building systems. We're an integrator, and that's where Web services play an important role for us.

We've always told our customers, "We'll take care of you, and we'll make sure that everything works." But getting different systems to talk to each other can be a painful process and very expensive. Fortunately, we have experience in this field because we do it over and over again at multiple sites. We have more than 300 branches worldwide. Integrating with other systems is our business.

Sometimes, integration is as simple as connecting to a piece of equipment—a motor, or something like that. But often it's something very complicated, as in talking with an entire building management system. Web services can make those integrations much easier to do. It gives us much richer content, particularly if I'm not even sure what system I'm going to run into out there, what system I'm going to have to integrate with.

Web services are helping Johnson Controls adapt to a rapidly changing, information-oriented world. Historically, components of building automation systems have relied on proprietary operating systems, communicating with each other using proprietary protocols. Although industry-specific standards for device communication (like the BACNET protocol) have recently emerged, many IT departments view these protocols and the devices that use them as proprietary.

Building systems traditionally have had their own networking infrastructure, separate from IT. Now, these two types of networks are beginning to blend. While in the IT world, there are usually very stringent standards covering just about everything, we didn't have these types of requirements within the building world. But now, for us to be able to communicate and use an external company's infrastructure, we have to adhere to certain standards.

Web services present a new standard for connecting systems and the basic exchange of information. It's something we can take advantage of, rather than have the building industry try to figure out another way that's going to be friendly to IT in terms of usability and trust. So, we really see Web services as a strategy to help us in integrating systems.

Johnson Controls has developed the first Web services-based facility management platform. The Metasys building management system uses Web services to provide operational efficiencies and cost savings to owners of nonresidential buildings. The technology allows businesses and other organizations to easily interconnect and manage a wide range of facility systems.

In the past, corporations, schools, hospitals, and government organizations were limited in how they could operate and optimize their facilities. Power, heating, air conditioning, lighting, fire, and security systems came in proprietary packages, which restricted how and from where they could be controlled. It also limited how data from those systems could be accessed and transformed into meaningful information.

Johnson Controls's technology not only integrates and simplifies the operation of building systems, but, for the first time, links them to management information systems. This allows enterprise-wide connectivity, monitoring, data acquisition, and reporting of vital operational information. As a result, businesses and other organizations can establish healthier, more productive, and safer environments at less cost and effort. Previously, such integration, when possible, could only be achieved with hours of computer programming to create customized connections for every individual application.

We have instances where we essentially run the facility for the customer. We own that part of the budget, we own the people that are in the facility management part of the business. We know the pain of having to take someone else's box and trying to make it work and get those things done. That's how we're a little different than most of our competitors.

Hill offers the example of how Johnson Controls serves a school that, in order to save money, has an automated system that coordinates environmental services with class schedules.

Say a college or university is putting together class schedules. Right now, once they do the schedules, they program them into the building management system. Now, with Web services, we have the ability to share the schedule between the two systems. I can actually use their scheduler and consume that as a Web service, bringing it into my system and automatically programming how the lights come on, when the heating comes on, and so forth. It's all based on the classroom schedule.

For Johnson Controls and its clients, Web services provide benefits in three key areas:

1. Reduced Expenses. The Metasys system eliminates the need for proprietary workstations and software, which can result in significant savings on installation costs. For example, giving multiple users access to the system can be provided at much less than it would cost to provide the same access to a conventional building automation system.

2. Distributed Access. The Web services-based Metasys system provides access to real-time information anytime, anywhere through desktops, laptops, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), or home PCs. This operational flexibility can improve employee productivity and reduce an enterprise's operating costs.

3. Meaningful Data. The Metasys system transforms data into useful information that is easily accessible to any interested manager, not just facilities staff. For example, in a critical care environment, a clinical manager can use the Metasys system to access a real-time, single-screen snapshot of the status of isolation rooms—including a patient's name, diagnosis, when he was admitted to the room, who occupied that room previously and that person's diagnosis, and the room's temperature, humidity, and status of the isolation air-handling system. Previously, such information only was available by logging into different systems, from different workstations.

These benefits are possible because standard Web services technology is built into the core of the Metasys system. Web services allow two or more computer applications—say a conference room scheduling system, employee database, and building security system—to share information and work cooperatively over the Internet. Web services are the tools that finally enable the connectivity between enterprises and applications envisioned when the Internet became widely accessible in the early 1990s.

The types of buildings Johnson Controls manages through Web services include just about every type of commercial structure imaginable.

We have over a billion square feet of office space under our control, either by our products or our services. That covers all markets—health care, education from K-12 through higher education. There are also what we call "critical facilities," such as financial institutions and data centers, drug companies, and high-tech manufacturing. Then there's commercial real estate, too—the office buildings. They all need building management systems.

In an increasingly mobile world, building facility personnel aren't always seated at a dedicated workstation. People now need to access and act on information in building automation systems from any location, and through the broadest possible range of devices. Johnson Controls's Metasys technology is designed to meet this need.

To make the information in our systems more valuable, we need to make it more accessible. Customers want facilities solutions that are based on Internet technology—systems that they can access with Web browsers, smart client applications, and mobile devices.

Many of Johnson Controls's customers have very specific needs.

Consider how we work with an airport. When a flight is coming in, the flight information system sends the information to our system to turn on the lights, air, electricity, and other services at the appropriate terminal gate. Then, once the people get in and the plane has been docked for a certain period, the system will turn everything off and send that information back to the flight information system. The building management system will also perform the billing for that terminal.

Web services also allow Johnson Controls to translate control data into end user-accessible information.

You've probably seen in some of the newer hotels flight information that feeds directly to a display. We never expected that someday we would be talking to a flight management system, but it's a practical application we need. That's because we have to know flight schedules, so we can turn on the environmental controls inside the terminal. Now we can also make that information available to hotels and their customers.

Johnson Controls has built its Web services initiative with the Microsoft .NET platform. The company also uses the Microsoft Windows XP Embedded operating system for its supervisory controller, relying on Web services to expose the controller's functionality. The hardware is a National Geode GX1 CPU, running at 300MHz with 256MB of RAM and 256MB of flash memory.

About three years ago, we were looking at rearchitecting our building management system, where information was the key driver in being able to talk to and integrate with other applications in the enterprise. A customer would ask us, for example, to integrate into their PeopleSoft system.

We looked at a number of different protocols and wanted something that was very IT-friendly. At the time, there were really only three companies that really presented a set of tools that allowed us to develop Web services: Sun, IBM, and Microsoft. At least these were the ones that were fairly mature. We picked Microsoft, because they had an operating system that we used in some of our equipment.

We're using the .NET framework to manage our code. But we also have some things that are not managed by .NET, which are mostly on the COM portion of our architecture. That's because we have things that are outside of Web services that we need in the building world.

Before deploying Web services, Hill relied on an assortment of integration technologies. He says the arrival of Web services has made his life easier and his shop more productive.

If you think about the things that came before Web services—Dynamic Data Exchange, DLLs, and all kinds of APIs—they all required special programming. If the programmer went away, and you needed to change the code, you had to redevelop everything. So, we needed a more standard way of interacting with other applications, or other systems. Even within our own organization, as we integrate our platforms, we're doing it through a set of Web services. We're not going to add a lot of special protocols, because it would take us a lot longer to get those two systems to talk to each other.

The beauty of Web services is that you can have published Web services, the ones you tell everyone about, and unpublished ones you wouldn't tell anyone about. That would include, for example, the way building automation and security systems talk to each other.

Web services make it easier to guide developers working in specific areas, says Hill.

The beauty is, I can essentially tell the developers doing security, "This is the way you talk to the building management system," and they can write to that. And it works the first time out.

Hill notes that Web services also speeds development time by allowing Johnson Controls to easily work with outside developers.

The technology allows us to shop out applications that we probably couldn't get done from a resource standpoint, or a timing standpoint. It makes it a lot easier for us to give the task to a third party and say, "Hey, here's my blueprint for talking to my system— develop this application." Web services present a rich set of tools, and a lot of external parties can develop applications much faster than in the past.

Hill notes that the Web services vendors are targeting the market with different approaches.

I think the vendors are kind of running neck and neck. To me, the race is to get a wide range of developers to use your tool set. That's what Microsoft is selling. Microsoft is looking at the developers as their customers. IBM, on the other hand, really wants to control the back office. So both companies have different objectives, but I think the race right now is between those two companies.

For Hill, one of the key advantages to using Web services is the ability to easily adapt existing software so it can interact with external applications.

We don't have to redevelop everything. We're able to put a wrapper around our own middleware, allowing us to essentially translate data into a standard format. So Web services allow us to communicate with outside applications, an ability we didn't have before.

Hill says organizations have to be realistic about Web services' ability to solve real-world business problems.

It's important to be very practical about why you're using Web services. There's a lot of hype in the media surrounding Web services. You'll see the idea, for example, of having a universal directory that's going to be out there and will know where all the Web services pieces are. But that's probably going to be a secondor third-generation technology. Right now, the Web services capability that offers the most value is integration with known systems. In this area, Web services provide a level of interoperability that didn't exist before. So, rather than getting caught up in the hype, you'll have something of practical value.

Like many Web services users, Hill feels that UDDI needs more work before it's ready for real-world use.

UDDI will mature as the industry matures. You'll have groups that will develop UDDIs for a particular industry. But until the Web services field matures, they're not going to be there.

The only other major concern I have is Web services security. You can never say enough about that. It's something that's still in the works, but it will mature. We've taken steps to address security in Metasys, but it also needs to be addressed for general Web services. Right now, not all Web services are exposed, but security really becomes an issue when you start exposing Web services externally. If you're using Web services within your own back-office infrastructure, however, it's not as big an issue.

Before adopting Web services, it's important to carefully study how the technology can improve a particular process, says Hill.

You need to measure the benefit. Ask yourself, "Am I able to do things faster, or am I going to be able to get richer information?" You have to design your metrics around those considerations. That's what we did. We went through that exercise, and it took a little bit of time, but we did it for the right reasons.

Hill believes that Web services are ready for everyday use.

Yes, I think they're ready for prime time. I think the tool sets are now mature enough. We've actually added on quite a few staff members in our engineering group, and we're able to get people up to speed fairly quickly with the tool set. You rarely find a lot of people with Web services experience, so we're sort of training them as we go. There are a lot worse things than Web services in the IT world that don't have as much industry backing, or companies really pushing for its success.

Hill says the proof of Web services' value lies in its growing acceptance among enterprises of all types and sizes.

Forget the hype, you can tell that Web services are useful from the adoption rate, particularly within the IT organizations. IT is all over Web services, because they really address some of their pain.

You think about the customer. You think about how Web services will reduce some of their pain, or take away some of the pain I have in the things I'm working on. When it comes to integrating systems together, Web services addresses these needs directly.

Hill doesn't feel that his decision to adopt Web services was particularly risky.

While we're an early adopter, we don't feel like we're way out on a limb. That's because Web services addresses something we were already doing—now we're just using a different mechanism to do it. We think we've found a much better way of working with our customers—much easier, much more efficient— and it's a standard that's acceptable to others. That was a big benefit for us.

So we adopted Web services for very practical reasons—it's an added benefit that others are also adopting it. We probably would have gone to Web services anyway, because they're core to what we do. On the other hand, we're glad we found something that was readily acceptable by others.

The fundamental reason for adopting Web services, however, was financial.

We have to make money at it, so that quickly narrows your choices