"Most multi-site small business owners have little visibility or control over their brick and mortar locations when they aren't there," said Mike Franco, co-founder and CEO of Riptide.  "They struggle with lights left on wasting energy, food spoilage because equipment failed or people complaining that it's too hot or cold."

Riptide's Smart Building solution puts facilities management on autopilot. With Riptide, small business owners can easily connect and control their most important building assets, including lighting, door locks, refrigeration, and heating and cooling. Riptide's solution automates operations with pre-programmed business rules that take necessary action or alert on issues. Riptide's solution can be implemented in hours, requires little or no training, and is affordable to even the most modest, small business operating budget.

Seven million business establishments operate in 4.4 million small buildings across the United States. Preventing energy waste, food inventory losses, security breaches, poor indoor air quality, and uncomfortable conditions are all possible with automation. For energy savings alone, The New Buildings Institute estimates potential savings in small buildings ranges from 27 percent to 59 percent. Yet, most small buildings lack automation and control to help prevent these issues. Traditional building automation systems were designed for large buildings with on-site engineers. Although industry giants such as Apple and Google are developing products for the home automation market, they typically lack business-grade features such as network security and multi-site management. With today's announcement, Riptide has made the benefits of automation accessible to small to medium businesses providing comfort, security, and management oversight all necessary to maintain the right building experience for their customers, students, employees and patients.

Riptide's technology partners include Google Cloud, Intel, Dell and Datastax. In November 2015, Daikin Applied became a minority shareholder in the company. Riptide is focusing its launch on the retail and retail food markets.

For more information, visit www.riptideio.com