There are more than 5.5 million light commercial buildings under 50,000 square feet in the United States, yet more than 86 percent still lack any form of advanced automation or monitoring. As discussed in our earlier blog, “Thermostats Don’t Scale Up,” these buildings have been left behind because the solutions available to them have never truly fit their needs. The reasons are structural, economic, and operational. They reveal why traditional building automation systems (BAS) were never designed for this segment.

• High Installed Cost Relative to Value – Traditional BAS platforms (e.g., Honeywell, Siemens, Johnson Controls) depend on expensive controllers, cabling, and on-site commissioning. Those costs make sense in a 200,000-square-foot office tower, but not in a 5,000-square-foot retail store. In small buildings, the wiring, programming, and integration costs often exceed the price of the HVAC equipment itself. While this complexity is justified in large commercial facilities, it’s a deal-breaker for light commercial properties.

• Complexity and Lack of Standards – Proprietary controllers, custom programming, and loosely defined communication standards (BACnet, Modbus, LonWorks, etc.) lead to interoperability challenges and systems that require highly trained specialists to install and maintain. Light commercial systems need turnkey solutions that are simple to deploy, simple to manage, and simple to support.

“Light commercial buildings need solutions that don’t require a Ph.D. to install or maintain.“

• Fragmented Building Stock & Ownership – Traditional BAS are typically installed in large, standardized facilities managed by professional building engineers. In contrast, the light commercial market is highly fragmented, with diverse building types and ownership models. Multi-site operators such as restaurants, retail chains, and medical clinics manage hundreds of small, varied locations, each with different HVAC systems and layouts. Tenants usually pay the energy bills, while landlords must invest in upgrades, eliminating clear ROI incentives for expensive systems. Serving this market with traditional BAS requires massive customization and cost.

• IT & Connectivity Barriers – Many businesses operating light commercial buildings either can’t or won’t allow third-party systems on their corporate networks. They lack dedicated, on-site IT staff to manage VPNs, firewalls, and IP addresses. Wi-Fi or Ethernet-based systems also introduce security vulnerabilities and depend on local network uptime, both unacceptable challenges for many small operators and the contractors that service them.  

• Lack of Technology – Until the past few years, the technologies needed to build a cost-effective, scalable smart-building platform for light commercial buildings simply didn’t exist. There were no reliable wireless, battery-powered sensors suitable for commercial environments. Cellular networks had limited coverage, low bandwidth, and high data costs. Only recently have LoRaWAN wireless, LTE/5G connectivity, and cloud-native architectures made it possible to deliver cost-effective, optimized platforms for light commercial buildings.     

• Traditional BAS is Designed For People who Run Buildings – Traditional BAS users are building engineers, facility managers, and energy specialists. People trained to operate large, complex systems in facilities over 100,000 square feet. These systems are designed around centralized control and fine-grained automation, requiring deep technical knowledge of air-handling sequences, PID loops, and BACnet endpoints. They demand dedicated staff and ongoing service contracts to maintain and reprogram. That approach simply doesn’t fit the realities of small commercial operations.

A New Approach: Smart Buildings for People Who Run Businesses

Light commercial systems must be designed for the people inside the buildings: business owners, franchisees, store managers, and multi-site operators running restaurants, convenience stores, clinics, and retail locations.

To serve them effectively, solutions must be:

• Simple and intuitive – usable without specialized training
• Business-focused – delivering insights tied to operations and savings
• Zero-programming – ready to deploy by existing HVAC contractors and facilities teams
• Connected and remote-accessible – no IT integration required

UBX: Smart Buildings Made Easy

UBX is building the first unified, scalable smart building platform specifically for light commercial buildings. Our solution delivers automatic energy savings, remote monitoring, and actionable insights. All without costly wiring, programming, or IT dependencies.

Talk with an expert to learn how UBX is helping operators modernize their portfolios and unlock the value of smarter, more connected buildings.