BAS migrates approved Siemens system to Lynxspring

It seems that hvac engineers for high profile buildings prefer the safe route when specifying Siemens, JCI, Honeywell, Invensys, etc. This can be explained by understanding that large companies have the perception of stability and reliability. So, why did the engineers for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art accept a proposed change order to substitute Lynxspring Jenesys www.lynxspring.com controls for Siemens Talon controls? You could argue that they are fed up with aggressive business tactics but I prefer to put it simply - it is a better solution. People in this industry will remember the changes in the 90's when companies like Alerton and Automated Logic started taking on the 'big boys'. It was no accident that these companies adopted the BACnet open protocol developed by ASHRAE. It comes down to 'competitive bidding' enabled by 'innovative systems' using 'open protocols'. Ok, so that was then. What evolved out of this upheaval was Tridium. As much as companies like Alerton and Automated Logic promoted 'open protocols' - they continued the effort to limit competitive bidding and 'capture' customers. Tridium introduced an open protocol platform (Niagara) that was built on the internet (an innovation) and made it available to OEM's. JCI, Siemens, Invensys, Honeywell, and many others quickly adopted the platform and offered 'private labeled' versions of Niagara (Honeywell Webs, JCI FX40, Invensys I/A, Siemens Talon, and others). True to form, these private labeled systems implemented varying strategies to 'capture' customers. The most egregious being the use of the Licensing NICS statement. Anything other than '*' in the license could limit the competition. Another strategy is to make access to the sub-network controllers difficult or impossible if you don't have proprietary software solutions. So, how does Lynxspring address these issues? Open NICS - they use '*' in the license branding statements. Wire-sheet programming at the sub-network level - the programming language for Lynxspring sub-network controllers (Edge) uses the same wire-sheet programming found in the Tridium Network Managers. Ethernet sub-networks - the Edge controllers use 'Niagara Networking' at the Ethernet level for communication with the Network Manager. It is refreshing to find a Mechanical Engineer that can recognize a better solution when they see it.