Commercial real estate owners are making a costly mistake by treating operational technology (OT) the same as information technology (IT), according to Bill Douglas, CEO of OpticWise. In a recent analysis, Douglas argued that most ownership groups fail to distinguish between the two categories of technology inside their buildings, leading to inefficiency, lost data, and higher expenses.
Information Technology, Douglas explained, manages organizational infrastructure like servers, email, identity management, and firewall policy. It connects employees to their tools and protects corporate data. Operational Technology, on the other hand, is the layer that runs the building itself: HVAC systems, lighting controllers, access control, parking management, leak detection sensors, elevators, and the data they generate. OT is what makes a building function efficiently or wastefully.
“IT is very skilled and very necessary at running the organization’s systems, financials, security, access, and all of that,” Douglas said. “But operational technology is a completely different thing. And most ownership groups have no idea these two categories exist.”
The problem arises when ownership groups ask who is responsible for technology in their properties. IT managers raise their hand because low voltage wiring in a rack looks like their domain. Property managers raise their hand because the building is their responsibility. Asset managers stay quiet because they focus on financial reports, not building systems. “Nobody is actually owning OT, and that vacuum is where the inefficiency lives,” Douglas said.
When no one inside the organization owns OT, vendors fill the gap. A general contractor finishes a building and hands technology decisions to a property manager who is already stretched thin. The property manager sees a compelling demo at a trade show and buys a solution that solves one problem without fitting into any broader strategy. Over time, a typical quarter-million square foot building ends up with a dozen or more disconnected systems, multiple redundant networks, and data scattered across vendor platforms the owner cannot access.
“They have strategies to build properties, to buy properties, to sell properties, to lease up, to increase rent roll,” Douglas said. “But they often just ignore the digital. So the vendors run the roost.” The consequence is not just inefficiency; it is a loss of data. Every system generates operational data that belongs to the property owner, but when vendors manage the system, they hold the data. The owner pays for a service and receives none of the intelligence it could produce.
Douglas emphasized that property managers, IT managers, and asset managers are all capable people, but they are being asked to do things outside their training. “We are asking the wrong people to do the right tasks,” he said. “A property manager’s job is to take care of tenants and lease up the building. Not to manage networks they never designed and probably cannot document.”
OT management requires a digital strategy, a digital architect, and someone accountable for the data it produces. Those roles do not need to be internal, but they need to exist. The Peak Property Performance framework, developed by Douglas and OpticWise founder Drew Hall, gives owners a structured process for auditing their systems, connecting them, collecting data, and using it to improve performance and profitability.
The clearest way to understand the cost of ignoring OT is to look at what a managed OT layer produces. Utility savings come from knowing when and how energy is consumed. Insurance rates go down when owners can document maintenance history and system performance. Tenant experience improves when the building operates reliably and problems are caught early. When OT is unmanaged, lights stay on in empty buildings, water damage goes undetected, and systems run on default settings for years.
“You lose control of your expenses,” Douglas said. “And you lose the data you should be able to use to operate more efficiently and drive more revenue.” The data is already there, produced by systems the owner paid for. The question is whether anyone is in a position to use it. That is not an IT problem or a property management problem; it is a strategy problem, and it starts with recognizing that OT is its own discipline with its own requirements and its own return.
