S4 Training at Broudy Precision
Broudy Precision is a member of Controls Group North America (CGNA). The S4 Group became a preferred supplier to this organization about a year ago and has been working with each CGNA member company whose business focuses on control systems to bring them up to speed on S4’s products and associated value proposition. While on the East Coast for the NFM&T show, S4 representatives scheduled an on-site visit with Broudy Precision. I was pleasantly surprised to walk into their training room and find representatives from 8 of their dealers; all of them were Tridium / Niagara dealers. Many of them had experience with, and a deep understanding of, the JCI Metasys® system and the N2 field bus technology.
Based on the quality of the questions from the participants, I would say that they definitely understood the value proposition of the S4 Open: BACnet-N2 Router; they also understood how the S4 product and Tridium-based systems work together to deliver a superior solution. This is especially the case as projects become larger in scope and complexity.
Having an interactive and informed audience allows the presentation and training sessions to be much more focused and productive. Instead of a canned PowerPoint, we did an interactive chalk talk with the direction of discussion being driven primarily by the questions asked by the participants. Clearly, the most popular features of the S4 Open: BACnet-N2 Router are the ability to co-exist with legacy Metasys® supervisory controllers through our Upstream N2 interface option and the “Supervisory Controller as a BACnet Client” feature which enables N2 transactions coming from the Metasys® Supervisory Controller to participate in the BACnet priority array mechanism as if they were standard BACnet transactions.
Broudy Precision was a wonderful host, S4 walked in the door to find a bag of fresh hot soft pretzels waiting for our enjoyment; there is nothing quite like this unique Pennsylvania treat! Broudy, and their dealers, are well on their way to being prepared for many successful Metasys® integrations. The Broudy team is rapidly ramping up to provide pre-sales engineering and first level technical support for the S4 products as well as their own value added services to their dealers. S4 looks forward to celebrating in that success with Broudy and other CGNA dealers as they come on board.
