Why TCS and Honeywell are focusing on India with autonomous building capability

TCS and Honeywell recently announced a new collaboration bringing together Honeywell’s expertise in automation, operational technology (OT) systems, and AI-powered analytics with TCS’ IT, cloud computing, and consulting capabilities. 

The idea is that by integrating IT and OT environments into a single infrastructure, customers can unlock real-time intelligence, improve operational efficiency, and enable more autonomous, data-driven operations across industrial infrastructure. 

The technology to enable this unlocking includes IoT sensors, AI and connected systems to monitor and optimise environments and has been around for a while. Adoption has been slower than anticipated in the West with its largely brownfield opportunity because re-fitting existing buildings is often more expensive than ripping them down and re-building from scratch. This new partnership will open up business opportunity, according to Anupam Singhal, President and Business Group Head, Manufacturing TCS.

India industrial new build market opportunity

Any smart building system is only as good as its data: specifically, connected data. All buildings contain systems, technology and sensors that generate data, including building management systems, utility meters, security access systems, air-quality sensors and a whole range of other meters and monitors. 

In a traditionally managed building, these systems operate discretely from each other, producing data in isolation on a specific aspect of building performance or operation. Only by connecting this disparate data from multiple systems into one single platform can it then be analysed to create meaningful insights. This is the unified digital foundation that TCS and Honeywell are planning to offer customers under this partnership. Singhal explains:

The focus is on industrial greenfield construction, deploying Honeywell products and setting the platform up so that customers can keep getting the signal data. This is a global agreement. We are taking products to customers in the US and Europe, but India is the initial focus market. In India the aerospace industry is restructuring itself and there are also lots of new construction opportunities in retail and life sciences.

The Indian Government has set quite ambitious environmental targets for industry, aiming for a 45% reduction in emissions intensity below 2005 levels by 2030. Consequently, Indian industry is looking to reduce its fossil fuel consumption, while continuing its growth using renewables.

How will TCS and Honeywell bridge the IT/OT divide?

TCS and Honeywell have had longstanding commercial agreements in place for some time. Honeywell uses TCS for enterprise solutions such as SAP systems, while Honeywell provides both products and services across the Tata group of companies.

Under the newly signed initiative, TCS will support the flow of OT data into customers’ IT systems, using its IT and consultancy capabilities and will work with Honeywell to bridge the divide between IT and OT systems for real-time visibility, predictive intelligence and autonomous process control. Honeywell will bring Honeywell Forge, its IoT platform that delivers AI-powered analytics and dashboards for operations. In particular, given the focus of the initiative, Honeywell will be leading with its Honeywell Forge for Industrials and Buildings suites. 

The partnership aims to help building and industrial operators integrate their IT and OT systems so that industrial sites can interact with the physical built environment in real time. Unlike existing smart buildings that collect data, TCS and Honeywell are combining capabilities to enable buildings to act autonomously, optimising energy usage, automating maintenance and enhancing safety.

TCS is also working with Honeywell to put its product suite on the NVIDIA Omniverse platform providing a sophisticated simulation environment to train AI models in virtual space before deployment. This also gives the partners the ability to host customers, demonstrating their joint technical capability. This joint demonstration is an important communication capability because the quest to combine enterprise data with industrial data and data on the edge is a cultural problem as much as it is a technical problem, with the data being collected and managed in very siloed ways. 

The decision-makers, and budget-holders tend to be segregated, working with very different suppliers. Bringing these different groups together around a simulation will be helpful. As Singhal says: 

IT and OT customers are both looking for the outcome, and we are gradually bringing technology together around the outcome for operational efficiency. TCS works on both IT and OT systems, enriching the product. As an SI we have the ability to bring ownership and get joint responsibility.

The new initiative in India comes at a time when recent changes in the US administration’s attitude towards climate change and fossil fuels might be thought to be reducing the opportunity to sell this kind of smart building solution there. Singhal says:

In the US the conversation is all about cost to enable margins to be conserved especially while there are supply chain issues because otherwise prices rise for consumers. And then that impacts inflation imbalance which impacts lifestyle. So, US companies are looking to reduce significant line items. With energy enterprises are looking to optimise their peak energy loads. The demand is there, but the driver is more about cost.

My take

Honeywell has a large market presence in India generating over a billion dollars in revenue annually, focused on the areas such as aerospace and industrial buildings that are being targeted by the partnership with TCS. The deal has been driven by the number of greenfield manufacturing plants being built in India, where the combination of Honeywell OT products with TCS capabilities should provide the duo with a strong opportunity to build state of the art autonomous industrial buildings.