We were delighted to be able to take some time out of his busy schedule to welcome Honeywell's Manish K Sharma to a Fireside Chat with our very own George Rockett, at the recent DCD>Control and Automate event. Which, if you didn’t catch it live, is now available on demand by clicking here or filling in the below form.

At the heart of this wide-ranging and enjoyable session, is the question that when data from 10 million buildings power your predictive analytics models, what is it actually telling you?

Sharma, who has also recently taken on the role of Chief Product Officer, has more than 20 years experience at Honeywell and is charged with developing the company’s innovation roadmap. He oversees the evolution of building management controls, utility management systems, industrial IoT and advanced automation technologies. As I said, a busy man!

In this discussion, he and George explore how the Honeywell team are pulling together to create ‘a single pane of glass solution’ that makes data centers smarter, safer and more sustainable.

For Sharma, engagement with customers is key; “I’ve observed many times technical organisations fail to really connect with customers. Technology is the enabler, not innovation itself. A lot of people get confused around this. Technology in solving the customer’s problems, now that’s the innovation. It’s not about what the technology is, it’s what it can do.”

“So taking this forward, we want to take this true innovation from the customer’s perspective. And we are really pivoting into the more vertical based outcome. Let me give you an example that is very important right now, healthcare. You want to help solve the problems which that sector has and you don’t want to just give them a standard system and say, here you go, take that. No, now, you want to start thinking from the customer’s perspective,” continues Sharma.

“For healthcare, you want to respect the patient, understand the way operations are happening, how patients are monitored, how things can become more effective for nurses in how they administer treatments, all these kinds of aspects. By knowing all this, your solution - your technology - will be different and more effective.”

The discussion covered a wide variety of topics, but one that proved particularly interesting was talk around the ‘single pane of glass’ approach.

“It’s basically a single source of truth, through which you’re getting data from the different critical systems in the data centre and you are bringing them together to really get the key outcome. By having this information available, you can far easier understand a problem, go deeply into it, find its root cause and then solve it faster. And every single customer I speak to, whether it is Europe, Asia, the Middle East, everywhere in fact, relates to this challenge and can see that this can help solve it.”

Watch the rest of this illuminating and exclusive discussion by filling in the form below: