Johnson Controls scales globally, driving the future of autonomous buildings

Challenge

Event streaming reliability, operational, and high costs

Johnson Controls is the global leader in smart, healthy, and sustainable buildings. Leveraging 140 years of innovation, Johnson Controls offers the world`s largest portfolio of building technology and software, serving industries such as healthcare, schools, data centers, airports, stadiums, manufacturing, and more.

The company uses event streaming as its core data pipeline for OpenBlue, a smart building ecosystem that combines an open data platform with AI-powered applications to unlock new levels of performance across HVAC, fire, security, and controls. Key advantages of this platform include optimized energy use, lower emissions, and enhanced equipment reliability.

As it scaled and data demands grew, Johnson Controls soon encountered reliability, operational, and cost issues. According to Leyla Mousavi, Chief Architect, R&D and Digital Architecture, Johnson Controls: 

“We sought a cost-effective data streaming platform that could scale globally across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia — while providing real-time data to OpenBlue with exceptional uptime. Redpanda was the solution.”

Why Redpanda

A self-managed solution that cost-effectively scales across global regions

To simplify its architecture and reduce costly data platform maintenance, Johnson Controls swapped its current platform to Redpanda Self-Managed on Azure, resulting in the following:

• Lowered total cost of ownership by $1.6 million
• Migrated the majority of its global footprint in 8-10 weeks
• Forged a strong working relationship, operating as a single, integrated team 

“The implementation and migration went so smoothly, we were able to completely migrate to Redpanda without disrupting customers,” Leyla recalls. 

Results

Delivering sustainability and performance today – and autonomy tomorrow

As the real-time streaming engine powering OpenBlue, Redpanda provides a continuous flow of sensor data from HVAC, lighting, fire, security, and other building management systems. OpenBlue, in turn, delivers data-driven insights to its customers to maximize energy savings, reduce maintenance spend, and guide facility improvements. 

“Redpanda’s performance is what sold us. Besides delivering immediate cost savings of 40-50%, Redpanda’s customer service was also outstanding, allowing us to go live in less than 10 weeks,” Leyla said.