Controls industry on verge of revolution
BSRIA’s annual World BACS study for 2018 shows that the global market for BACS products grew by an estimated 4% annual growth rate (AGR) to reach more than US $6.3 billion in 2018 and is forecast to reach US $7.8 billion in 2023. This in turn supports the larger market for value added services and maintenance.
BSRIA’s research focuses in detail on nine national or regional markets. While hardware such as controllers and field devices still accounts for most of the turnover, software is growing at 10% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) – more than twice the overall rate for the market. This includes the software used to run building systems and, also increasingly, to analyse and optimise them, as well as building energy management (BEMS) and other more specialist software.
BSRIA’s senior analyst, Henry Lawson, says: “As part of the general quest for smarter and more integrated buildings, we are also seeing increasing convergence in building systems. While HVAC tends to remain the primary focus, we found that in over a quarter of projects there was convergence, especially with lighting where the synergy is most obvious but also with security and even fire safety systems.”
Globally almost 90% of building controls software installed is still run on local servers there is growing acceptance of the cloud and Software as a Service (SaaS) applications. Europe leads this field, with the Swedish market being “especially enthusiastic”. Clients in German speaking countries continue to be markedly “more cautious” about entrusting data to the cloud.
Image credit: Shutterstock.com/ Peshkova
