H3C IoT-enabled Smart Office Solution

1. Demands

Intelligent office is a key part of smart campus. Conventional office management relies more on manpower, which is time-consuming and laborious and is liable to cause problems such as security risks, waste of resources, and high corporate management costs. This requires enterprises to improve corporate management efficiency and reduce operating expenses.

The following are the issues of the current office management:

2. Solution design

The overall architecture of the IoT-enabled smart office solution contains three layers. Compared with the traditional mode, this solution integrates the platform with businesses.

Smart endpoint layer: It is the most southbound layer, which includes environmental monitoring sensors (temperature and humidity detector, air quality detector), safety monitoring sensors (gas, water intrusion, smoke), lighting control devices (smart switches), and electrical management devices (smart sockets).

Network infrastructure layer: IoT of smart office can be deployed together with wireless networking or deployed separately.

Wireless + IoT hybrid networking: Integrated networking and unified management of wireless and IoT networks can be achieved through IOT AP. It connects to wireless endpoints and smart IoT endpoints via a downlink.

Service platform layer: The IoT service platform is a unified platform product dedicated to the smart office solution, which can uniformly manage network and endpoint devices via AC+IoT expansion cards or all-in-one IoT devices. Meanwhile, a variety of application systems are built-in, including lighting management, appliance management, environmental monitoring, and security management.

3. Service platform for smart office

The platform provides features including lighting control, appliance management, environmental monitoring, security monitoring, and applets:

Lighting control

Timing control: To reduce the frequency of manually switching on/off lighting facilities, the enterprise can configure an automatic timing switch according to its administrative management requirements. For example, set a time to automatically turn on the lights before 8:00 in the morning, and off after 20:00 at night.

Linkage control: In sparsely populated areas such as the public areas of the corporate offices and stairwells, a human body infrared sensor can be added to reduce energy consumption. By doing so, the lights will be automatically turned on when there are people, and off when no one is present.

Scenario control: In addition to timing control and linkage control, it can also be customized according to the various operation or management scenarios of the enterprise. For example, in the lunch break scenario, setting a condition to turn off the lights during the lunch break to ensure that employees can rest in a comfortable environment and reduce energy consumption. Besides, in the meeting scenario, you can use the user-defined settings to automatically adjust the lighting at the beginning and end of the meeting.

Electrical appliance management

There are a large number of electrical facilities in the corporate offices such as the printer, water dispenser, microwave oven, and air purification device. These electrical facilities run for a long time, which causes high power consumption and brings safety risks, becoming a major potential danger to corporate security.

The IoT-enabled smart office solution can manage the electrical facilities in the office through smart sockets, scene panels, and human body sensing endpoints so that it can control the powering-on/off status of power supplies and monitor the current operating status of the load. The solution can effectively reduce energy consumption and ensure electricity safety for enterprises. The solution enables the flexible formulation of management policies in terms of actual business requirements:

Timing control: Configure an automatic timing switch according to enterprises' administrative management requirements.

Linkage control: A human body infrared sensor can be added so that the facilities can be turned off if the sensor detects people. A humidity and temperature sensor can be added so that it can automatically turn on air conditioning appliances such as humidifier when the temperature and humidity reach a certain threshold.

Scenario control: Similar to that in the lightning control.

Environmental monitoring

To make employees work in a more comfortable environment and improve their work efficiency, H3C provides enterprises with a humanized office experience solution.

Indoor environmental state monitoring: Monitor environmental states including indoor temperature, humidity, formaldehyde, PM2.5, PM10, and AQI (air quality index). Users can view the environmental data trend through the IoT platform.

Linkage control: The smart policies of the platform can combine environmental monitoring with electrical appliance management to dynamically adjust the ambient conditions to a comfortable level.

Security monitoring

Apart from electricity safety, fire safety is also an important part of the safe operation of enterprises.

Fire safety - smoke monitoring: Smoke detectors are deployed in the offices to monitor the ambient air in real time. When a fire occurs and the smoke spreads into the optical chamber of the detector and reaches a certain concentration, an alarm will be triggered and reported to the IoT platform. Then, according to the configuration, the IoT platform will immediately remind management personnel to handle it in time. At the same time, the alarm will activate the built-in speaker to issue a "fire" voice message, providing more time for people to evacuate before the fire spreads.

Fire safety - waterlogging monitoring: A water leakage sensor line is laid under or around the leak-prone areas. When the water leakage sensor line detects water, the device will trigger an alarm and report it to the IoT platform. Then, according to the configuration, the IoT platform will immediately remind management personnel to handle it in time.

Intrusion security: Intrusions are monitored through human infrared sensor endpoints. Configure flexible policies, such as enabling human infrared monitoring based on time (during winter and summer vacations), to monitor whether there are unauthorized persons in some dangerous areas.

Alarms on the platform: Once the above security events occur, the platform will trigger alarms. Meanwhile, an on-site audible and visual alarm can also be deployed to make alarms.

Management applets on the mobile endpoints

Users can monitor and manage office devices, analyze data, and configure policies on the applets without installing additional apps.

4. Benefits

The H3C IoT-enabled smart office solution helps enterprises improve administrative management capabilities, effectively reduces energy costs, and improves corporate management efficiency.