The Continental Automated Buildings Association (CABA), Ottawa, Ontario, and an alliance of leaders from the building automation, HVAC, security, IT, and facility management industries announced the formalization of efforts to create guidelines for sharing data and control across facility systems. These guidelines, called oBIX (Open Building Information Xchange), employ XML/Web services to enable open systems capabilities and enhanced operations.

The alliance’s definitive goal is to evolve the oBIX guidelines into a standard protocol for building systems. Although not currently an industry-wide standard, these defining efforts put forth by oBIX will allow building professionals to enjoy such benefits as enterprise-wide facility management and open systems integration based on IT standards.

Those interested in becoming involved in oBIX should visit www.oBIX.org.