Can These Two Tech Giants Solve Smart Buildings?

Hello readers,

Welcome to the IoT For All newsletter! This week we’re talking about how smart buildings are getting smarter, how smart building sensors can save you money, IoT security challenges, and more!

Open Standards, One-Click Onboarding: The Future of Smart Infrastructure?

For years, smart building innovation has run into the same brick wall: interoperability. Most buildings are outfitted with a patchwork of proprietary systems—HVAC, lighting, security—that don’t speak the same language. This means costly integration headaches, vendor lock-in, and missed opportunities for energy savings, operational efficiency, and better occupant experiences.

A new partnership between Microsoft and Siemens, announced this week, takes direct aim at this problem. How? By embracing open standards like W3C Web of Things and OPC UA, enabling “one-click” device onboarding, and standardizing how building data is described and shared across platforms. Together, Microsoft and Siemens hope to “[reduce] integration efforts by up to 80%”.

It’s a bold claim and a vague metric, but it might be the unified, plug-and-play infrastructure the smart building sector has long been in need of.

Siemens and Microsoft have plenty of weight to throw around. Microsoft’s Azure business already has a foothold in some 85% of Fortune 500 companies, and holds a quarter of the global cloud market as of 2025. Siemens, meanwhile, has long been putting its money where its mouth is on smart infrastructure, having played a key role in the high-tech renovation of LaGuardia airport, and acquiring start-up after start-up in the smart building space on its way to beefing up its Building X platform.

The partnership targets large, complex environments—think data centers, higher-ed campuses, commercial real estate—where existing systems are especially fragmented. In those contexts, the promise of frictionless data flow and portfolio-wide visibility is a compelling pitch. If successful, this alliance could establish a de facto standard for smart building interoperability, pulling third-party developers and device makers into its orbit.

But even a solution built on openness comes with tradeoffs. By standardizing integration, Siemens and Microsoft lower the barrier to entry but they also concentrate power at the platform level. There are also concerns about long-term cloud costs, cybersecurity risks in newly integrated systems, and the indirect pressure this move places on smaller vendors struggling to keep up with hyperscaler-backed platforms.

Still, the potential upside is hard to ignore. The shift from proprietary pipelines to open, structured data unlocks operational convenience but also lays the foundation for AI-driven optimization, developer innovation, and future-proof digital twins. If the “one-click” promise holds up, the impact could extend far beyond enterprise campuses, eventually democratizing smart building capabilities for smaller players through downstream tools and services.

The next phase of smart building development may not be about individual devices or flashy dashboards. It may be about who controls the data plumbing, and whether the pipes are open to everyone.

📖 Top Articles

Smart Building Sensors: Real Cases Show Major Energy Savings & Cost Cuts

As cities grow fast around the world, buildings are using more and more energy. They use about 40 percent of all global energy and cause around 30 percent of carbon emissions. Because of this, governments are setting stricter rules to protect the environment. At the same time, more companies are focusing on ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) goals. For building owners and managers, going green is no longer just a trend—it’s a smart way to save money and run buildings more efficiently.

Read more

Five Critical Factors for Selecting IoT Connectivity

As global networks evolve, choosing the wrong IoT connectivity technology can derail your deployment—leading to higher costs, reduced device lifespans and stranded investments.

Semtech’s new connectivity options whitepaper outlines the five essential factors for selecting the standard that’s right for you—whether you're deploying globally, operating underground or planning for 10+ year device lifecycles.

Explore the trade-offs and benefits of NB-IoT, LTE-M, Cat-1 bis, LoRa®, and RedCap. See how different technologies match the needs of:

• EV charging infrastructure

• Smart water and gas metering

• Mobile asset tracking

Whether you’re deploying today or planning for tomorrow, download this guide to make confident connectivity decisions.

🔥 Rapid Fire

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• Open-source engine enables high-performance data processing for IoT devices

• Born of frustration – will SGP.32 fix the IoT chaos (or fuel it)?

• Cellular IoT module market surges 23% as US-China tensions reshape industry

• European regulatory approval for LPD-S direct-to-sensor satellite IoT

🎙️ The IoT For All Podcast

In the latest episode of the IoT For All Podcast, Thomas Neubauer, co-founder and CEO of Dimetor, joins Ryan Chacon to discuss how telecom-enabled drones are powering aerial IoT solutions. The conversation covers the evolving role of telecom in drone operations, the convergence of telecom and aviation, drone applications, and regulatory challenges.

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🗓️ Events & Webinars