This post kicks off a three-part series on the evolution of building automation in mission-critical environments. We’ll explore how IT’s role in facilities has changed — from early adoption, to today’s converged platforms, to what’s next in intelligent infrastructure. First up: a look back at how it all began.
For years, if you worked in facilities, you didn’t talk to IT, and if you worked in IT, you weren’t talking to facilities. The history of building automation is, in many ways, a mirror of broader technological change: from analog to digital, siloed to networked, reactive to proactive. In the early decades of the data center era, building systems such as HVAC, lighting and access controls were primarily mechanical and operated in isolation. There was minimal integration between them, and virtually no input from IT teams. Facilities managers were the primary operators, relying on manual checks, timed settings, and physical presence to ensure environmental conditions met the needs of increasingly sophisticated compute environments.
The earliest building automation systems (BAS) were proprietary and specialized, requiring dedicated training and tools. They existed on isolated loops or closed networks, limiting both their capabilities and their risk profile. Meanwhile, IT teams were laser-focused on servers, networks, and software — the digital backbone of enterprise performance — and had little reason to interface with the analog world of facility operations.
This separation made sense at the time, but then the racks got denser and the demands became stronger the shift toward more centralized data centers with higher power densities forced a rethink. Server uptime now depended directly on cooling performance and electrical resiliency, no longer just an IT metric, but now a facilities challenge too.
Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, organizations began layering basic IP connectivity onto legacy building systems. Temperature sensors, power meters, and CRAC units started generating data that could be transmitted, stored, and analyzed. While these early efforts often struggled when disciplines were combined, they planted the seed for more integrated approaches. A facility manager could now log into a browser-based portal to view real-time temperature, or receive an alert if humidity spiked in a critical space.
It was clunky. This phase also marked the first time that IT teams began to engage — if cautiously — with building systems. The rise of TCP/IP-based controllers and SNMP-enabled devices created touch points familiar to IT professionals. And as companies sought centralized dashboards and remote management, the value of IT-led architecture became clearer.
This early convergence of disciplines set the stage for what’s now a rapidly evolving landscape. IT’s fingerprints on building automation were still light at this point — more augmentation than transformation — but the implications were already taking root. The groundwork had been laid for smarter, more connected data center facilities that could respond dynamically to the ever-changing demands of compute infrastructure.
Next up: How today’s converged platforms are changing what “resilient infrastructure” means, and what operations teams are using IT-led automation to create responsive, efficient and resilient environments.