As I start into my seventh calendar year of editor/owner of AutomatedBuildings.com, and my fifth calendar year of writing this column for ES, I am proud of the several hundreds of industry articles we have published on my website and have reflected on in this column.
All these articles and interviews, which originally seemed a little like "future watch," have become the new reality shaping our industry. When we started our online magazine, we did not know that the Internet would have such a profound effect on all our lives. I could not even imagine the new reality of having an online IP phone service, or that owning software would become unfashionable and would be replaced with hosted Web-based solutions.