Ever have one of those ‘D’oh’ moments?  You know what I’m talking about.  One of those moments when you realize something that is intuitively obvious to the most causal of observers, yet seems to have eluded your razor sharp observation for an unconscionable amount of time. For me it was realizing the important role of SNMP in the building automation world. I’m sure the term SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) is familiar to many of you who have any interaction at all with the IT world.  SNMP is the de facto standard for monitoring IT type equipment like switches, routers, repeaters and such.  Of course there are many Network Management System (NMS) applications that are designed to monitor and manage this vast sea of IT assets. I’ve always been aware of the fact that companies that have a high competency in HVAC and BMS protocols also provide products with SNMP capability. I just never bother to connect the dots and ask WHY? The D’oh moment was the realization that many BMS systems are SNMP enabled which closely ties the management of IT and building assets.  Many building control devices, much like IT assets, are equipped to communicate via the SNMP protocol.  Therefore the building devices can be recognized and managed with standard, of-the-shelf NMS applications, like IBM Tivoli, HP OpenView, Aprisma Spectrum, and Micromuse Netcool.  After all managing a sea of PCs and routers is really no different from managing a cloud of building controls. 

All well and good, but why are we talking about SNMP on an OPC blog?  Good question.  Since connecting the enterprise is allow about integration, many users are pulling information from their control systems, security systems, building automation controls and IT assets into the same place.  Sometimes that’s an NMS console; sometime it’s a HMI/SCADA system or a historian.  Users need to be able to integrate both OPC enabled and SNMP enabled devices and applications.  That’s where products like the MatrikonOPC Server for SNMP (which connects OPC clients with SNMP agents) and the MatrikonOPC Agent for SNMP (which exposes OPC DA and A&E servers as SNMP managed devices) come in.  Using OPC and SNMP as complementary protocols, users can easily integrate OPC-based automation systems within network or Enterprise management environments, building and process automation systems.  This is becoming increasingly more popular as companies try to ‘get greener’ and better manage their production and building systems.

So did everyone out there know that SNMP and building automation were so closely related? Was I the only one who just thought of SNMP as an ‘IT’ protocol?  I’d be interested to hear from anyone who is using SNMP and OPC as part of their building automation solutions.  Do you use OPC-in-SNMP-out or vise-versa?