If your facility has a reasonably modern building automation system (BAS), then the full Synapse solution will almost certainly be able to integrate seamlessly with your facility.

However, we do have many customers for which this is not the case, who are able to benefit greatly from our program as well by using our EMIS (Energy Management Information System with sub-metering) solutions.

Yes, we serve a variety of different customers and many of them use different aspects of the Synapse solution.

Our full solution is typically ideal for service providers, and for owners/operators of commercial, industrial, and municipal buildings – but doesn’t suit every business model or facility.

For example, some of our customers just use our point-mapping and data-modeling tools with their own analytics packages – while others just want our AFDD or optimization and demand management tools. Many of our industrial customers are focused solely on using our submetering/EMIS packages to monitor their equipment.

These are just a few examples of different ways the Synapse system of services can be customized to meet your needs. Once you begin using some of our services, it is easy to test out our other capabilities to see what is right for you!

If you have data, we can get it integrated with Synapse! Many of our projects pull data from multiple sources, and we have existing drivers for dozens of different integrations. A typical Synapse project will use one of our gateways at the customer site to get data from the building automation system (BAS), but frequently there are additional data streams that can all be pulled together under the Synapse interface. Examples include meter/sub-meter data, billing data, and utility data among others.

These different data sources are typically integrated via Webhooks, APIs, MQTT, or LoRaWan when available, but we also have a few different options for manually uploading data when automated methods are not available. For example, some of our "point-mapping only" customers or "AFDD only" customers will simply upload some data via CSV instead of using our gateway. (They are missing out on some great benefits of live integration, but that's what serves them best.)

Most facilities connect to the Synapse platform via our secure plug-n-play gateway. There are two common ways to do this: (1) we ship a gateway to your site and you connect it to your BAS network, or (2) you can pull a gateway image from our Docker repository onto a virtual machine that is connected to your BAS network.

Our customer service team is always standing by to assist with this process and answer any questions you may have!

Note that we can also integrate data from other sources, and have a variety of other approaches for integrating facilities with Synapse, so let us know what you need - and we'll tell you how we can make it work!

Our independent data layer means your facility data are your data. We can integrate your data with your existing data solutions in real-time, or you can download whatever data you'd like. Additionally, all of our point-mapping and data models can be downloaded using standard industry protocols (i.e. Haystack & Brick).

While we are confident that Synapse provides the best value across all of our services, this capability eliminates risk on your end since you can easily move between different analytics solutions using the gateway and data from Synapse.

This concept works the other way as well. If you have a different data acquisition/hosting solution in-place, Synapse can use that solution as an input for its analytics tools.

Our entire platform is designed with a security-forward approach, to meet the US State Department's requirements for handling "sensitive but unclassified" (SBU) data, and to meet all requirements for installing devices on networks at federal buildings.

For obvious reasons, we do not publicly disclose the details of our approach to security, but a brief overview is available here - - and we are more than happy to provide whatever additional documentation is necessary to your IT and security experts to make sure they are comfortable with our technology.

If your facilities have highly-specific security needs, we have experience with this as well. Reach out and we can describe how Synapse can be augmented to meet these types of requirements.

Even though the information we handle are not typically considered to be high-value data - we treat all of our customer data as though it is.

While the current Synapse platform is only a couple of years old, it has proven to be reliable with an uptime of over 99.99%. All customer data are replicated across multiple geographic areas and vendors, so if any server or site experiences an interruption, everything will automatically failover to the functioning servers. Coupled with routine backups of everything at the site, our system is designed to withstand significant network and/or hardware failures with no impact to our users. System updates are extensively tested prior to being pushed to production to avoid accidentally introducing bugs, and we have someone on-call 24/7 to handle any issues you may encounter.

Keeping up to date with the different building analytics offerings on the market is not an easy task - even for those of us enmeshed in the business! Buying guides and comparison articles are outdated within months of publication, and lots of companies make similar sounding claims about their products. That being said, we've designed Synapse to make this decision as easy as possible. Some of the key things we'd look for when making a purchasing decision are as follows:

• Open framework. The only thing we know about the future of these technologies is that they will continue to evolve, so we think it is important to use "open" solutions that can easily add or migrate to solutions over time without having to start over from scratch. This is the concept behind our "open data layer". We can integrate with whatever you need, and other vendors' solutions can be integrated with our services.
• Flexible data acquisition. As more and more of the world becomes automated and generates new types of data, you want an analytics engine and interface that can evolve as your needs evolve. If not, you will end up purchasing multiple analytics tools for every new type of data you want to collect. For example, you don't want separate systems for your BAS, your electricity, your gas - and then layer that with some IoT solutions or whatever ESG-type reporting is coming down the road. Synapse provides a single interface where you can view data, run analytics, run reports, etc. from a wide variety of sources using a single log-in and interface.
• Breadth of services. Whether you are principally in the market for reporting tools or AFDD solutions or any one of our services today, we think adding new services should be as simple as flipping a button. With Synapse, you get a full-suite of analytics packages to choose from - allowing you to experiment with different technologies without the time and expense of multiple onboarding/set-up processes. Using our open framework, you can build solutions on top of Synapse, but why not give yourself that flexibility from the start!
• Price vs. level of "effort". This market can generally be split into low-cost/high-effort or high-cost/low-effort solutions - meaning the inexpensive solutions end up costing lots of your time to set-up and use, while the "automated" solutions are very pricey. In our view, true automation means you should be saving both money and time - so that is how we built Synapse. We are the most affordable "low-effort" solution on the market today.
• How well does it work. This is probably the hardest question to answer. Every company in the facility analytics space makes similar-sounding claims and is continuously evolving - so how do these products actually stack up? While we know some of the shortfalls of our different competitors, we don't really have a detailed comparison yet. We are just focused on perfecting the Synapse platform - and we're getting closer every day. Since our systems are truly automated, we offer free or reduced-price demos of our software for you to evaluate at your facilities and experience the benefits of our solutions firsthand before making any purchasing decision. For now, this is the best we can do - but we look forward to getting some true side-by-side comparisons in the near future.

We are in the process of developing a more in-depth buyers guide to this market, but in the meantime, if you are interested in learning more about how Synapse can make your purchasing decision easy, get in touch and we'll be happy to dig more into the details!

Yes, if you have certain highly-specialized requirements, we can add custom features or components to meet them. The Synapse platform has tons of built-in customization capabilities that meet the needs of nearly all our clients - but there are some scenarios where we have done custom work:

• Some customers have requested custom graphics and/or analytics for monitoring specialized equipment. This typically pertains to non-HVAC equipment in manufacturing or industrial segments.
• Some customers request reporting that matches a highly-specific template. While our custom reporting features are about as flexible as they can be, we have made custom templates that users can drop directly into their ESG or performance reports.
• We can use Synapse as the "base" for building out enterprise software for non-HVAC, non-energy applications. We have done this type of work for some clients in the IoT space.

If you have a specific software need, we will work with you to find a solution!

Our pricing is determined by the characteristics of each project. It is calculated as a function of which services you select, and the quantity/type of equipment we will be monitoring. Since there are so many possible combinations, we don’t publish a detailed pricing breakdown. That being said, due to the high levels of automation built into our software, we are by-far the most affordable solution for the level of services we offer.

And, of course, we offer discounted rates for high-volume customers.

We work with all of our customers to find the best way for us to maximize our value to you. We have entered into a variety of partnership, join-ventures, and non-standard payment agreements based on client needs, and are always open to exploring mutually-beneficial business relationships with our clients.