Long Term Support

Long Term Support is another aspect that true standards bring much confidence into. This is especially important for commercial buildings, as the systems, once commissioned, will stay there not for years, but decades.

When proprietary systems are considered, it is unlikely their manufacturers will maintain full backwards compatibility for an extended period of time. The reason is cost, and when you do not need to care about a broader audience, it is easy to make a decision to deprecate older versions. For customers this means the proprietary system which look nicely today, will have to be scrapped prematurely, as soon as one of it components ages and stops functioning. And while manufacturers may claim 5- or 10-year support, such period of time can hardly be considered long term. So how about 30 years?

Open standard-based system is probably the only assurance you will be able to find compatible spare parts when something breaks. The original vendor may be out of business or will have simply discontinued the products, but the chances of finding a part part that works from another vendor is much higher. Time flies and even 10 years, which seems to be a long time now, will pass quicker than you realize. And a full system replacement may not be exactly what you will want then.

This realization has come to me while working (as a hobby) on upgrading my smart home, battery-powered components, to an energy harvesting option. A photovoltaic cell or a kinetic harvester will live almost forever. The energy is then stored in super-capacitors (no rechargeable cells either). Such components work on tiny amounts of power, so there is no heat nor high voltage to shorten the life of a sensor or a wall switch.

Other system components will age (mostly the electrolytic capacitors that every high power device has now) and one by one they will start failing, needing replacement. If it is a standards based systems, the new parts will likely have much improved capabilities, but should fully support the original functionality of the failed part. As long as they are standards - based.

Long term warranty and support is still not discussed often today, but I expect the awareness here growing significantly, augmented by legal codes. This push alone may eventually rule the non-standard systems out of the market, becoming even a legal requirement.