Johnson Controls has unveiled new artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities within its OpenBlue digital ecosystem, aiming to help building owners reduce energy consumption, streamline operations, and lower costs. This expansion introduces Energy & Comfort Intelligence, an AI-enabled feature designed to optimize airflow in buildings, along with an agentic AI assistant and an AI-native architecture that enhances data connectivity across systems.
The latest addition, Energy & Comfort Intelligence, focuses on optimizing the significant energy users in buildings: the airside systems. Utilizing Nantum AI, it enhances control over air handling units, fans, and other related equipment, providing energy efficiency recommendations crucial for sectors like life sciences, healthcare, research, and advanced manufacturing, where precise environmental conditions are vital.
Autonomous Commands Drive Energy Savings
"The new OpenBlue Platform transforms building capabilities with AI-driven efficiency and autonomous control, including airside functionalities," stated Jamie Cameron, Vice President and General Manager, OpenBlue at Johnson Controls.
A practical case is financial software company DATEV, which realized nearly a 10% reduction in airside energy use on certain equipment using Energy & Comfort Intelligence, with no comfort complaints from facility users. The system executed numerous automated operational commands to optimize performance.
Streamlined Operations and Enhanced Productivity
DATEV's Plant Engineering Planner, Marco Ringer, remarked on the platform's effectiveness
DATEV's Plant Engineering Planner, Marco Ringer, remarked on the platform's effectiveness and expressed eagerness to extend its deployment. The OpenBlue platform now includes OpenBlue Intelligence (OBI), an AI assistant providing insights, recommendations, and workflow automation while keeping facility teams informed. Through text or voice, teams can access essential data and automate tasks, such as maintenance scheduling, improving productivity.
Enhanced onboarding processes in OpenBlue shorten device and data point categorization times by up to 95%, reducing months-long implementations to mere days at large facilities. The structured data is integrated with industry-standard models, allowing seamless data transfer into existing applications, enhancing operational insights.
Security and Flexibility in Data Management
OpenBlue Airwall introduces advanced cybersecurity, employing zero-trust architecture that segments networks and restricts asset access, thereby minimizing exposure to threats. Authenticated, encrypted tunnels ensure secure device connections, with remote service limited to essential access only, enhancing safety measures.
The OpenBlue AI-powered ecosystem, by harnessing decades of expertise, promises precise control and enhanced visibility, offering up to 155% return on investment according to research from Forrester. This makes significant reductions in energy use possible as energy costs continue to rise.
Johnson Controls, a global pioneer in thermal management, mission-critical building systems, energy efficiency and decarbonisation, announces new AI capabilities in its OpenBlue digital ecosystem to help building owners reduce energy use, automate building operations and cut operating costs.
The expanded platform includes: Energy & Comfort Intelligence, an AI-enabled capability that helps optimize how air flows through buildings; an agentic AI assistant; and a new AI-native architecture where data is classified and labelled according to industry-standard models, making it easier to connect information across equipment, systems and software applications.
Enhanced AI control
Part of the OpenBlue digital ecosystem, Energy & Comfort Intelligence focuses on one of the biggest and often overlooked drivers of energy use in buildings: airside systems.
Powered by Nantum AI, the new feature uses AI algorithms to deliver efficiency recommendations and enhanced control across these systems, including air handling units, fans and other air circulation equipment. Enhanced AI control is especially critical for industries requiring precise indoor operating conditions like life sciences, hospitals, research universities, and advanced manufacturing facilities for products such as batteries and semiconductors, where consistent temperature, pressure and humidity matter most.
Data-based automated commands
“The new OpenBlue Platform changes what a building can do on its own. It brings AI-driven efficiency and autonomous control across the full digital ecosystem, including airside for the first time,” said Jamie Cameron, Vice President and General Manager, OpenBlue at Johnson Controls. “Energy & Comfort Intelligence is one example: it tunes air handling continuously against real conditions, cutting energy waste while giving facility teams unprecedented control.”
Financial software company DATEV, for example, implemented Energy & Comfort Intelligence and reduced airside energy use by nearly 10% on applicable equipment. The system operated autonomously, executing thousands of dynamic, data-based automated commands and decisions for each piece of equipment. As an additional benefit, the company’s facility team did not receive a single comfort complaint, demonstrating that autonomous control can achieve substantial energy savings without impacting occupant comfort.
Automating routine operational tasks
“OpenBlue Energy & Comfort Intelligence exceeded our expectations, and we’re excited to expand its use to more of our facilities,” said Marco Ringer, Plant Engineering Planner at DATEV. “We look forward to working with Johnson Controls to continue cutting our energy use with better control.”
OpenBlue now includes OBI (short for OpenBlue Intelligence), an agentic AI assistant that proactively surfaces insights, makes recommendations and executes approved workflows, all while keeping humans in the loop. Facility teams can easily access data through text or spoken interactions across occupancy, air quality, equipment performance, energy use and more. The tool goes beyond providing data, allowing teams to automate routine operational tasks, like placing work orders and prioritising maintenance, ultimately improving productivity and speeding up response time.
Multi-building campus
Across OpenBlue solutions, new automated onboarding processes use sophisticated algorithms to automatically find devices and points and place them in the appropriate category, reducing implementation times by up to 95%. In complex facilities with thousands of data sources across a large building or multi-building campus, this reduces implementation times from months to days. Data is structured and assigned clear meaning, connecting raw information to specific equipment and actions to allow sophisticated connections in a variety of interfaces.
The updated data foundation is AI-ready and aligned to industry-standard models for ease of integration and faster access to insights. For technical customers and partners that use their own applications for workplace convenience and sophisticated portfolio management, the new OpenBlue platform API also enables organizations to seamlessly pull data into apps they use today and leverage the vast quantities of data their buildings produce for key insights.
AI-powered digital ecosystem
Easier access to data can be paired seamlessly with enhanced cybersecurity features. OpenBlue Airwall offers zero-trust architecture that isolates devices through segmented networks and restricts access to critical assets, reducing the attack surface and limiting exposure to external threats.
Remote users and devices are required to prove their identity before any initial connection. Once authenticated, an encrypted tunnel is created between devices to support complex, rapid building-to-building connections between individual devices rather than broad access to entire networks. When external vendors provide remote service, access is limited to only the devices and times necessary to further reduce risk.
With increased implementation speeds and greater control that draws on decades of building and software expertise, the OpenBlue AI-powered digital ecosystem helps customers deliver precise control and enhanced visibility across complex facilities while cutting energy use in a time of rising energy costs. Research conducted by Forrester demonstrated that OpenBlue can deliver up to 155% ROI for customers, showcasing the impact of leveraging AI for facility operations and efficiency.
