Honeywell Introduces Attune Advisory Services

3/20/2012

Honeywell Introduces Attune™ Advisory Services, Connects Cloud Computing and Facility Know How to Cut Energy and Operating Costs

• Cloud-based, Software-as-a-Service Technology Provides Easy Access to Sophisticated Monitoring and Analysis, and Honeywell Specialists • Recommended Building Improvements Delivered by Skilled Technicians • Online and Onsite Expertise Combine to Trim Facility Expenses Up to 20 Percent MINNEAPOLIS, March 20, 2012 – Honeywell (NYSE: HON) today introduced its new Attune™ Advisory Services, a suite of professional services that combines cloud-based tools and analytics with a global network of operations centers, and energy and facility experts to provide enhancements that can reduce utility bills and operating expenses up to 20 percent.  Attune Advisory Services help building owners wherever they are on the energy- and operational-efficiency spectrum, providing technology and support to gain baseline awareness of building performance, make improvements to reduce energy and operations costs, and define an ongoing strategy to manage and optimize a facility. “The performance of building systems and equipment can degrade by as much as 5 percent every year, which translates to energy and operating costs that continually escalate,” said Paul Orzeske, president of Honeywell Building Solutions. “Companies are starting to realize the significant impact this can have, as well as the opportunity it presents for bottom-line savings. With Attune, we’re providing the ease and convenience of cloud-based technology with expert advice and actionable guidance so companies can capture and maintain those savings.” Facility managers are under increased pressure to go beyond simply monitoring building systems and providing base-level comfort. They are being asked to translate facility information into actions that deliver energy, operational and environmental outcomes. However, many don’t have the resources to assess building performance, identify opportunities to upgrade infrastructure and operations, or prioritize retrofits. In fact, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), buildings account for nearly 40 percent of energy used in most countries. The IEA says the potential for savings is significant and can often be achieved at low or no costs. However, many barriers work against energy efficiency in buildings, including lack of useful information. “We’ve gone to great lengths to reduce energy costs while keeping occupants safe and comfortable,” said Tom Damsell, technical services supervisor for Brookfield Office Properties, which owns and manages One Liberty Plaza in lower Manhattan. “Working with Honeywell, we’ve already cut annual electricity use at One Liberty Plaza by approximately 7 percent .Now, we’re looking for the support to help uncover the next level of savings — to find the improvements that are less obvious but highly impactful.” Attune Advisory Services turn building performance data into an action plan that pinpoints potential upgrades and their expected return on investment. The service suite enables facility managers to optimize their budgets, personnel and systems by combining powerful cloud-based tools and analytics with insight and advice from a global team of Honeywell consultants, and customized support provided by skilled onsite technicians. The services exceed typical facility management software, which often only provides a steady stream of data, but no insight or recommendations. Attune offers three levels of assistance — awareness, improvement and optimization — with programs focusing on either energy or operational efficiency. The new energy-focused services include: Attune Energy Awareness Energy Awareness enables facility managers to access and monitor electricity and natural gas consumption using a Web-based, software-as-a-service dashboard that collects information from utility meters to provide insight on building performance and create a baseline to help identify savings opportunities. Honeywell also provides lobby signage that allows organizations to showcase the results of their efficiency efforts in clear-cut, graphic-driven terms, helping educate occupants, and spurring them to alter their behavior and energy use. Attune Energy Improvement Energy Improvement turns building data into actionable recommendations with the advice of Honeywell’s experienced analysts. Facility managers receive periodic reports that provide information on efficiency opportunities with related recommendations on upgrades and replacements. Building retrofits made as a result of these services can deliver energy savings of up to 10 percent, potentially paying for themselves within months. Attune Energy Optimization Energy Optimization delivers a powerful combination of improved building knowledge and actionable recommendations, backed by detailed monitoring, measurement and verification to help ensure facilities operate at their peak. Optimization can deliver energy savings of 10 to 20 percent on average, with the potential for even greater savings in older facilities. Honeywell plugs into a building to gather systems data and assess performance using cloud-based fault detection and diagnostics. Local service technicians collaborate with a global team of optimization experts to review the findings and present a plan to help facility managers reduce utility consumption. Ongoing assessment and monitoring allow building owners to see that upgrades continue to deliver results to the bottom line. Attune Operations Services The goal of Operations Services is more efficiently run buildings. Facility managers can select different combinations of 24/7 equipment monitoring, remote and onsite response to alarm conditions, and Honeywell consultation for uncovering other potential improvements and lowering equipment life-cycle costs. By providing secure, cloud-enabled support, Honeywell is able to help address the issues building operators routinely face — assistance the company is already providing to more than 3,000 sites that are connected to its global operations centers. Attune Operations Services provide guided solutions aimed at saving money and reducing downtime, and the improved insight allows Honeywell to dispatch technicians only when needed. It’s a cost-effective way to improve overall efficiency and another step toward optimization. Additional Information: • Attune Advisory Services website• Attune Advisory Services overview• Attune Energy Awareness video• Attune Energy Improvement video• Attune Energy Optimization video• Honeywell Building Solutions on Twitter• Honeywell Building Solutions website Honeywell (www.honeywell.com) is a Fortune 100 diversified technology and manufacturing leader, serving customers worldwide with aerospace products and services; control technologies for buildings, homes and industry; automotive products; turbochargers; and specialty materials. Based in Morris Township, N.J., Honeywell’s shares are traded on the New York, London, and Chicago Stock Exchanges. For more news and information on Honeywell, please visit www.honeywellnow.com. Honeywell Building Solutions is part of the Honeywell Automation and Control Solutions business group, a global leader in providing product and service solutions that improve efficiency and profitability, support regulatory compliance, and maintain safe, comfortable environments in homes, buildings and industry. This release contains certain statements that may be deemed “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, that address activities, events or developments that we or our management intends, expects, projects, believes or anticipates will or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements. Such statements are based upon certain assumptions and assessments made by our management in light of their experience and their perception of historical trends, current economic and industry conditions, expected future developments and other factors they believe to be appropriate. The forward-looking statements included in this release are also subject to a number of material risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to economic, competitive, governmental, and technological factors affecting our operations, markets, products, services and prices. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results, developments and business decisions may differ from those envisaged by such forward-looking statements.

Oracle's RightNow CX Feb. 2012 Release Extends Capabilites

Oracle’s RightNow CX February 2012 Release Extends Capabilities of Leading Customer Experience Suite

Redwood Shores, CA – February 29, 2012

News Facts

The February 2012 release of Oracle’s RightNow CX Suite, the customer experience suite, has been enhanced with several key new capabilities designed to power great customer experiences. Enhancements include a new Knowledge API, Multifactor Authentication, Facebook Conversation Access and improved Intent Guide functionality.

Knowledge as a Service Capabilities Powered by New Enhancements

Knowledge API allows businesses to enhance service quality and increase self-help opportunities by leveraging the RightNow Knowledge Foundation from any application, service or device, delivering Knowledge as a Service capabilities.

The Industry's Most Secure Cloud Environment Helps Increase Consumer Confidence

Multifactor Authentication (MFA) process strengthens authentication to help reduce the risk of data compromise. This feature is designed to build trust and increase confidence among consumers, further strengthening RightNow’s commitment to providing its customers with a secure cloud environment and to empowering companies with a high level of security.

Oracle’s RightNow CX suite has more compliance certifications than any other customer service cloud platform including: Department of Defense Information Assurance Certification and Accreditation Process (DIACAP); National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council information security standard defined by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI -DSS / PCI-SSC); Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996; Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70 (SAS 70) and Statements on Standards for Attestation Engagements (SSAE 16); and Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA). 

New Social Tools Enhance Customer Service

Facebook Conversation Access, a component of the RightNow Social Experience, allows organizations to subscribe to a Facebook page or RSS feed from within Cloud Monitor, which is a social media monitoring tool that lets brands listen and join conversations that consumers are having about a company’s products and services.

This tool empowers brands to improve service quality by automatically retrieving relevant posts and providing a contextual view of conversations and comments from across the social network.

Targeted sentiment detection on comments helps agents to prioritize activities and elevate the most pressing customer inquiries.

Intent Directed Virtual Assistant Enriches Customer Interactions

Intent Guide Virtual Assistant provides enhanced web chat experiences with threaded chat interactions to gather critical information from consumers utilizing natural conversational language. This feature helps to better identify customer intent and improve company responsiveness, increase conversion rates, and reduce operating costs. 

On January 25, 2012, RightNow was acquired by Oracle.

News Release from BMC - Remedyforce Release

Latest BMC Remedyforce Release Prepares IT to Tackle Contemporary Challenges

BMC and salesforce.com deliver new capabilities to the social enterprise through Remedyforce; Dell expands reach of Remedyforce to small and mid-market businesses

HOUSTON, Feb. 27, 2012 – BMC Software (NASDAQ: BMC), the leader in Business Service Management (BSM), today announced the availability of the winter release of its cloud-based Remedyforce Service Desk solution, which includes innovative new capabilities for service request management and the integration of social media and external sources into a truly modern knowledge management system. Both additions provide even higher levels of productivity for end users, improving customer satisfaction and providing significant gains in efficiency for IT. 

Additionally, an expanded reseller partnership with Dell provides greater access to the BMC Remedyforce Service Desk solution to small and mid-market organizations.

“These new capabilities can help to modernize IT support so we are ready to not only meet the challenges of today, but also tomorrow,” said Ervin Sala, director of IT Operations, Saveology. “Remedyforce has long provided us with exceptional service and we expect these capabilities will substantively benefit our IT service management approach.”

The BMC Remedyforce Service Desk solution is at the forefront of helping IT harness the “consumerization of IT” phenomenon. The advent of social media has made communication between individuals and groups instantaneous, collaborative and continuous, driving an expectation that all departments, including IT, interact with equal speed and agility. Through the capabilities of Salesforce Chatter, the leading enterprise social network, the BMC Remedyforce Service Desk solution makes it easier for IT professionals to interact with each other, ultimately benefitting the end user. Furthermore, new functionality enables Chatter feeds and other sources to be archived in the solution’s knowledge management system, providing unprecedented access to information.  

Developments and expectations in the market create new challenges for IT support teams and new requirements for IT service management systems. The BMC Remedyforce Service Desk solution represents a cost-effective, contemporary and best-practice driven solution to the challenges of delivering high quality service support at optimal cost. Service request management empowers end users through a self-service interface – maximizing responsiveness, quality and efficiency. The new knowledge management system delivers capabilities, which bring in social media and other external content, to unlock the latent knowledge spread across multiple repositories and Chatter. These new capabilities can be expected to further drive down the cost and increase the efficiency of service desk operations for organizations.

“Remedyforce is helping IT departments achieve greater success in the world of the social enterprise with the power of Chatter and Force.com,” said Ron Huddleston, senior vice president, ISV & Channel, salesforce.com. “The latest version of Remedyforce is evidence of BMC and salesforce.com’s mutual commitment to revolutionize IT service management.”

The BMC Remedyforce Service Desk solution leverages the Force.com, salesforce.com’s social enterprise platform for building employee facing social apps, to deliver the performance, reliability and scalability of the industry’s leading cloud platform, as well as the ability for BMC developers to quickly extend the functionality in BMC Remedyforce.

“Customer recommendations are critically important to the ongoing development of Remedyforce. We’ve been able to innovate on customer feedback and requests in record time thanks to the responsiveness of our teams and the flexibility of salesforce.com’s Force.com platform,” said Marc Ferrentino, CTO of SaaS, BMC. “Remedyforce is a smart, strategic investment for organizations in changing times as it has a growing partner ecosystem and rich product roadmap, which has been bolstered by our recent acquisition of Numara, further accelerating the growth of our SaaS business.”

Dell is now including the BMC Remedyforce Service Desk solution in its IT management portfolio. This will increase the reach of BMC Remedyforce in small and mid-sized organizations, arming them with a new level of IT support that will help them modernize operations.