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00:00:01
Fall Catch Up Episode
28 Plays19 days ago
Jason and AK wrap up an action-packed year of travel, customer workshops, and real estate events with a relaxed, guest-free conversation—and a couple pours of Penelope whiskey to stay on brand.
🥃 Whiskey to Start
The episode opens with AK’s Penelope Cigar Series old fashioned (torched orange + maple syrup), and Jason uncorks a Penelope “F-Cancer” collaboration bottle—smooth, complex, and freezer-ready thanks to its higher proof.
🏢 What We’ve Been Up To
After 12 guest interviews this season, the hosts reflect on a heavy conference cadence: Realcomm in Savannah, Partner Summit, Panduit GSIC, and Cisco Live Melbourne. They highlight a growing demand from owners, landlords, and tenants for real occupancy intelligence—a shift from buzzwords to practical, data-driven planning.
📈 Market Trends Shaping 2025
Occupancy as a Priority
Organizations want clearer insight into how space is truly used. Wi-Fi telemetry, AI-enabled cameras, and collaboration tools are becoming mainstream inputs for workplace design.
Return-to-Office Stabilizes
Most enterprises now average 3–5 in-office days, especially in Class A markets. Hybrid remains, but the “magnet vs. mandate” era is fading.
Hybrid Work 2.0: Humans + Agents
A standout theme: agentic AI. The next wave of buildings must support human teams and digital/robotic agents—requiring higher Wi-Fi density, precision indoor location, and unified data across systems.
Energy Pressures & Eco-Mode Buildings
With electricity demand spiking due to AI data centers, energy optimization is becoming central. HVAC still drives ~60% of building consumption. Tenants increasingly want dynamic “eco modes” tied to occupancy, even when constrained by base-building systems.
🔌 Ecosystem Growth
Fault-Managed Power (Class 4) awareness has exploded—over 80% of integrators at GSIC recognized it—showing how energy-efficient, low-voltage infrastructure is going mainstream. Partner ecosystems are also evolving, with more firms building real estate practices alongside IT.
🤝 Breaking Down Silos
One major takeaway from global customer visits: surveillance, workplace tech, access control, and IT teams finally see the value of sharing data. These unified insights drive smarter design decisions and stronger outcomes.
🎧 Closing Thoughts
Jason and AK wrap with gratitude for the community, excitement for what’s next, and a toast to a strong close to the year. Follow the show for upcoming episodes and deeper dives into future-proof workplace design.
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Transcript
Introduction and Journey Recap
00:00:20
Speaker
All right, everybody, welcome to the Distilled Buildings Technology Podcast. Where smart buildings are shaken, stirred, and data-driven. I'm your host, Jason Scheer. I'm your host, AK.
00:00:31
Speaker
And today is a guest list episode. Actually, like AK and I are the are the guests on the episode. We've had an awesome run of about 12 episodes with guests for our first our first year.
00:00:43
Speaker
And we figured we'd just like spend a little time with you guys talking about what we've been up to ah and and like trends that we're seeing in the and the market. Yeah.
00:00:54
Speaker
Welcome everyone. Good to see you, Jason. It is exciting. We've had a long run, 12 guests counting still. but We've been through a lot, quite a bit of events and a lot of motion in real estate.
00:01:07
Speaker
Let's talk about the first one we did.
Whiskey Tales with Penelope
00:01:10
Speaker
No, but first but first whiskey, right's right? is this This is the Distilled Buildings Tech Podcast. So what ah what is in what's in your glass tonight, AK?
00:01:20
Speaker
It's the usual, but this time it's the Penelope whiskey. Nice. This bottle cigar series. That's a cigar series. Nice.
00:01:32
Speaker
ah i I actually ended up putting it in an orange and took a little bit of sugar, um tors it and it's delicious. Cool. And you did that like in the span of like to like five minutes, like from getting home from the office.
00:01:45
Speaker
Yeah, totally. yeah yeah It's a ready, set, go. It's just torch, maple syrup, a little bit of sugar, and then torch it, pour it out on top, and it's really good. How about you?
00:01:56
Speaker
I think i think in in that cigar series, trying to think, were we in Savannah at Real Calm like earlier this maybe like late late summer? And like we both like spotted that bottle on the shelf. and We're like, oh, it has a big P. It says Penelope, but I don't think we've seen that one before.
00:02:13
Speaker
No, and it's, a yeah, it's I think one of their cigar series that's just released actually. Yeah, I think it was the first one. And i mean, i think I think like most things, Penelope, it'll be, you know, the first of the first of many cigar series ah bottles.
00:02:30
Speaker
Yeah. What do you have in your glass? so i'm I'm opening afresh. It's a Penelope kind of night. There you go. So the first first thing, and i've I shared this with you, but um my local shop, they actually, they called me a couple of weeks ago because I always harass them about like getting...
00:02:48
Speaker
you know, certain things in and they have this Penelope pre-mix old fashioned. And it is a, it's black walnut, um, um, black walnut bitters, like rye, with you know, kind of like their rye whiskey and bourbon. So it's like a blend of like rye and bourbon and,
00:03:09
Speaker
I've had a couple of other like, like bottled pre mixes. um Bullet has pre mix, like both Manhattan and, um and old fashioned. But this is, this is insane. Like it's really, really good.
Real Estate Trends and Changes
00:03:23
Speaker
And the best thing it's 35, 38% alcohol proof. thirty five thirty eight percent alcohol by proof um So you can put it in the freezer and it won't freeze. And almost like it gets, it turns it like turns into a syrup in the freezer.
00:03:37
Speaker
um So it's, yeah, it's really, really good, really easy drinking. But what I'm actually drinking tonight, this is another bottle that my shop got in and it is, got in and it is another Penelope and it's their F cancer, um like collab. And I'm all, ah I'm always like skeptical of anything that's like a collab or, um you know, ah like, like it seems like overly promotional.
00:04:06
Speaker
So I saw this bottle at the shop and then of course I came home and did my research and it got really, really good. it got really good reviews and it has a great story behind it, like with the founders.
00:04:18
Speaker
Um, so I saw the article. It's amazing. Well suggested. We'll put it on the show note just for people to yes you want to actually read it. It's an excellent read. Yeah.
00:04:29
Speaker
Smells really good. Smells good. It's a blend. It's a blend. Straight whiskey. See if it says anything else on here.
00:04:38
Speaker
Yeah, so 38% corn, 37% rye, 2% malted rye, 3% malted barley. It's always cool whenever they put the mash bill on on the bottle.
00:04:49
Speaker
Nice. so Cheers. Cheers.
00:04:55
Speaker
Oh, yeah. It's good. Super smooth.
00:04:59
Speaker
Good depth. Pretty complex. Yeah. Cool. So like, i think we I think we talked a little bit about like events like we were at real calm um earlier in the summer in Savannah, which that's always a good real comes kind of interesting because they're never it's not like Vegas every single year, or like Orlando every single year, they kind of like move around.
00:05:20
Speaker
So it was nice to be in in I guess a little bit of an obscure city like Savannah. Right. Yeah, it was it was amazing. Great conversations. Awesome individuals, obviously, as usual.
00:05:32
Speaker
um and And obviously the driver there was owners that are directed to find a solution for either their tenants or as landlords that want to change the real estate market.
00:05:43
Speaker
And that that was so was the theme. Yeah, I think I think between like RealCom and Coronet have that and have that in common, right, is it's a lot of us, you know, industry folks, but also, um you know, the biggest part of the audience is, you know, either either, you know, tenant side customers or building owners and um and landlords.
00:06:05
Speaker
the what what What are some of the themes that you've picked up on, you know, through through some of these shows throughout the year? Yeah, I think mostly what we've seen was real estate change and or the focus around understanding occupancy more and more. Obviously, everyone has smart spaces or want to have smart spaces. But what I think the common theme that we both saw, at least I saw heavily, is every single person that was interested was trying to figure out,
00:06:35
Speaker
How do I make sure that I understand my current occupancy and how do what how does that give me enough options to build my new building? Whether they're retrofitting space or consolidating or creating a new one, the mandate of coming back to the office is not a mandate anymore, it's here.
00:06:50
Speaker
I mean, specifically in New York City, we've seen it. it It's not a theme anymore, it's ah it's an actual mandate that you gotta come to the office to do, especially in the class A building.
00:07:00
Speaker
But now as and as an owner, as a tenant or a landlord, you want to know How am I doing in my real estate? Should I be building more? Should I be building less? Understanding your occupancy trend, knowing what people want to do and how they behave, especially after where we are now. And we have a lot of data and people want to use that data and apply it into means and methods to figure out and correlate what should be my next build.
00:07:25
Speaker
Yeah, the ah our RTO, like I think um we went through a period where used, you know, like sayings like magnet, not a mandate, but... ah most customers across all segments, I think financial services probably leading the way, and but everyone is moving towards more days back in the back in the office.
00:07:47
Speaker
think what we saw at the beginning of this calendar year but somewhere around like an average of like three days in the office. yes Kind of like that Thursday, you know Tuesday through Thursday.
00:07:58
Speaker
ah but I would say 50% or more of customers are like back five days in the office. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's still, you you still have the hybrid of people want to work four days and then use one day for administrative work, et cetera.
00:08:14
Speaker
but the you know, ability to do full-time working from home or or just not ability to come back to the office. I think we're seeing that kind of like dwindling
Tech Integration in Real Estate
00:08:22
Speaker
away. And it's it's mostly driven by understanding the occupancy that, okay, if I have people coming to the office, I adjusted a little bit around 23 and 24 based on hybrid work. But now people are actually coming back. What do I do with my space that I have either available or the one I'm thinking about building?
00:08:40
Speaker
And we're seeing the trend, heavy trend on... wanting to expand. you know Customers have the ability now to expand and wanted to do something similar to what they have done in 23 and 24.
00:08:53
Speaker
built Start building with technology first, then real estate last or construction last. I mean, I hate to say it that way, but it is what customers are doing. it's it's good It's good to see that that script kind of get flipped because, don't know, like the 25 years I've been in the industry, IT t was always an afterthought.
00:09:12
Speaker
and You know, the design was done, um you know, the layout was complete, and then and then they brought in like IT, AVE, you know, other people that kind of fall into, you know, the DIV27 side and say, oh, like, you know, fit this out with but technology.
00:09:28
Speaker
Yeah. So you're you're starting to see that a little bit more of like customers bringing either a consultant or manufacturers or even their internal IT into the conversation earlier.
00:09:39
Speaker
Absolutely. There are more conversations that are much early on around the build and the way we build around technology that I've seen in the past. I 100% see the change of every single customer that wants to understand the new space. They bring in the technology experts, consultants, manufacturer, helper, partners to give them that help that they need to understand where, what, how, how,
00:10:05
Speaker
At what level should they build the next space? And I think that's that's huge for us because it allows them to now, now the customer is actually educated around what they have seen, where should they build?
00:10:16
Speaker
And the next level of occupancy is important. Yeah. and And I think the aha moment that that we've probably seen, you know, in, you know, customer briefings and workshops is you the the business, you know, real estate or, you know, employee experience or HR, you they're finally starting to see that IT has so much telemetry in the environment, right? Like whether that is, you know, Wi-Fi that's always been there, um you know, giving them at least like some directional guidance on like how, you know, how space is being used and how people or devices are moving throughout the space.
00:10:56
Speaker
and then And then secondly, video conferencing infrastructure has gotten a lot more sophisticated over the years. like You know, we can't talk about anything without talking about AI or computer vision models, you know, video conferencing equipment and even video surveillance equipment can help, once again, provide us at least some direction on how space is being used and and what, you know, current occupancy looks like versus, think there are like two two two old school methods, which are time and motion studies, you know, the old like clipboard and clicker method, which...
00:11:34
Speaker
still still baffles me today when I see customers that you know that are still using you know clipboards and clickers, um but ah but even like over the top options of,
00:11:48
Speaker
um we saw like this shadow IT movement more like on the productivity side, maybe like 10 years ago, we kind of see like almost like shadow OT in spaces where um you know facilities or real estate employee experience teams are like coming in and like sticking sensors under desks or like in common areas.
00:12:11
Speaker
And sometimes like IT doesn't even have a clue that this is happening under their nose. Yes, and we we're seeing more of a change now that um some of the technologies are being looked at as heavily from IT than OT.
00:12:28
Speaker
and Back in the days, to your point, technology was being dragged after the fact, and then IT had to deal with it or say, okay, we don't support it. You guys, facilities, you guys can do what you want. We're in conversations where IT t is being involved, has a say, but not only that, has a decision to make whether or not they're going to be able to support it because at the end of the day, it's still an equipment that requires some IT involvement.
00:12:53
Speaker
ah Even I mean, um obviously you mentioned the word AI 10 minutes in at least. yeah Yeah. I tried to hold ah I think... yes i think we're we're in In our conversations now, we're bypassing some of some of these words, right? the The word that we hear now is agentic.
00:13:12
Speaker
I might not have just ah an LLM, but I might have an agent or multiple agents in the building that are doing some of these work. I mean, we're seeing it now on the consumer side, and but in the real estate, that is the conversations that we're having is okay, we understand Agentec is here.
00:13:28
Speaker
What kind of agents can and i can i augment some of this workload? yeah Easily one that we've seen that's being done is just you know scanning the network and scanning the ideas and devices and being able to automate some of these workflows.
00:13:42
Speaker
around support and availability of products and downtime that we had in real estate. I mean, back in the day, this was to be, you know, someone complains and then there's a ticket and then someone gets to acknowledge the ticket. By the time you get to an actual outcome, it could be 24 hours.
00:13:57
Speaker
With agents, it gets done immediately. Yeah, I think like like just thinking about but like like we probably think about, you know, agentic AI from like a building operation standpoint of how can you how can you use, you know, ML models to to optimize.
00:14:17
Speaker
But one one one thing you kind of like tickled my brain on a little bit was think we're going to see like a like a hybrid work 2.0. yeah And the not too distant future, probably within the next 18 months to to to two or three years where and you know, and managers will be managing like hybrid workers, right? Like some, some human workers and some, you know, some AI workers, I think that'll be maybe, maybe hybrid work, you know, 2.0.
00:14:50
Speaker
tu autoto I'm curious to think about like, what, what is the workplace of the future to support that model of both like digital and human workers? Yeah.
00:15:01
Speaker
it's It's amazing that you know now we're we we're actually in the mix of some of these conversations where we're seeing you know real estate changing to even robots, drones, humanoids in a space. And the use case of some of those you know started with one of the articles I saw with a customer that wanted ah just surveillance around technology.
00:15:26
Speaker
human beings. And their objective was and not to eliminate the facility managers, but to augment some of this workload and ability to do that around the data aspect that they have now.
00:15:39
Speaker
And even even if it like, even like the most simplistic use case of, um you know, like ah a robot worker in the office, like a, like cleaning staff, right? If you had like a robotic, um you know, like commercial vacuum service or something like that, like what that,
00:15:56
Speaker
needs more than anything is a location aware infrastructure. um And we we'll be we'll be deploying, like a lot of times we talk about wi Wi-Fi density to support RTLS or real-time location services in an environment um for tracking users and you know other assets in the environment. But when we start thinking about you know autonomous vehicles and drones within an environment, like they're going to require high-density Wi-Fi and you know sub-meter that space. Yeah.
00:16:30
Speaker
accuracy within within that space so think today we're thinking about future proofing the environment with high density Wi-Fi to support you know employee tracking um and how space is being used. But that same density will support these um these this new hybrid work environment.
00:16:52
Speaker
Yeah. And a lot of this conversation even revolves around security. right you know hybrid work 1.0 dealt with ICE and VLANs and segmentations 2.0. What happens?
00:17:08
Speaker
How do you secure? How do you segment agents from each other? how do you put and enough guardrails around that? And some of these conversations were in the forefront of it, both of us, from both sides around yeah network piece and the operational piece of equipment. And I feel like Customers that are asking these questions are much, much ahead in their thinking, in their thought process. And the only way to do it is obviously when they're future-proofing their space.
00:17:31
Speaker
Building the traditional way doesn't get you anywhere. You know it would be completely behind thinking that you can build the traditional way that you did for the past 25 years, and you're going to achieve that outcome.
00:17:46
Speaker
It'll be either expensive, cumbersome, or not achievable in some cases. Yeah. So we we talked a little bit about like occupancy and understanding how space is being used as the, you know, still the, the, the kind of the prime directive for most, you know, most real estate professionals, you know, whether it's on the landlord side or tenant side, um, class a absorption.
Energy Efficiency and Sustainability
00:18:09
Speaker
So like that, that, that premium real estate, um, when we think about NF NFL cities, you know, New York, Atlanta, um,
00:18:18
Speaker
ah Denver, like that class A space is, if not, maybe not fully let, but like it is, it is like at a high rate of, of, of lease, almost like pre pandemic levels.
00:18:31
Speaker
yeah Where, where does that leave everything else? Like in, in like the building stock.
00:18:40
Speaker
i think it I think it's important for some of these customers because they're looking at it as, okay, if my lease is about to expire and now I have two choices, I can either consolidate or don't do anything.
00:18:50
Speaker
Well, clearly don't do anything doesn't get you anywhere because the lease is expiring. So either you expand or you or you shrink. And I think we know that some of this data that we're giving our customers allows them to make certain choices.
00:19:03
Speaker
either Those choices are very critical to their decisions. One, either when they're expanding, at what level of expansions they should look at, you know, from a capital exposure, from an OPEX exposure, should they be looking at spaces like what we have shown them? Or should they be looking at spaces that are and in in less of a size, but more of a density around hybrid work and and the ability to bring employees, you know, in three times a week versus five times a week?
00:19:29
Speaker
So these are the conversations that our customers have. And even on the energy side, yeah Just understanding the energy flow and how much of that they're using at this particular place, i um I was shocked on that amount because sustainability is top of mind still.
00:19:43
Speaker
And for them, the ability to understand, i have ah i have an operational expense, but I also have a human aspect to this. you know i i I talked to a customer and their objective was, okay, I understand if my space is not operational, but it's designed that it's sustained a specific power.
00:20:01
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And they were talking to their engineers and architects to see if they can go to an eco mode that is like almost a deep sleep for a building when they know it's not being occupied. I mean, these are conversations that are way different than what we had in the past where customers just you know built a building and just said, okay, fine, I'm going to occupy it. And I hope that when I'm not occupying it, some level of automation gets to save me money.
00:20:24
Speaker
These are customers that asking above and beyond just savings you know from a human element too. Yeah. that that's That's really interesting because, i mean, a lot of people have been on this journey with you know with Cisco and PropTech um in general for the past you know the past five or six years. And say at like at some point, there was a lot of emphasis on ESG and sustainability goals, like net zero targets.
00:20:51
Speaker
I don't know whether it's you know the current you know macro or geopolitical environment, but like sustainability seems to have taken a little bit of a backseat, but the same, like sustainability was about cost savings, right? Whether that was, you know, operational energy costs, carbon costs.
00:21:10
Speaker
And what I'm hearing what i'm hearing and you say, and I think what we're both seeing is customers are still trying to find ways to save cost. Yes. I mean, there's the algorithm to bottom line is pretty simple. It's very simple.
00:21:25
Speaker
very simple and like cutting cutting operational costs, which energy is a huge component of is, is one way to get there. And, you know, kind of back to AI, like you can't you know you can't flip a newspaper, open up you know open up Twitter without seeing something around um kind of this this this next wave of energy crisis.
00:21:48
Speaker
um think we've seen like residential and consumer rates starting to go up, commercial rates in certain you know certain geographies going up bye by the the pressure of ai data data center build out.
00:22:02
Speaker
And I kind of call it the, you know, the the Rob Peter to pay Paul problem. Yeah. Like we're going to find it amount of electricity. Yeah. I mean, and and until until until there's until we have either a massive breakthrough in energy or you know, or SMR regulation, you know, gets fast tracked or loosened, like the the amount of generation capacity that we have is is as so ah ah planet Earth is is somewhat finite um for the for the time being. So, you know, data center utilization and pressure is going up. So how do we how do we um supplement that? I think we've supplemented by trying to make our buildings more efficient, more reactive, more like energy-based
00:22:47
Speaker
intelligent. And I love like, we've all probably seen eco mode in different places, right? Whether it's on your air conditioner in your car. But why can't our buildings run in eco mode today?
00:22:58
Speaker
Like, why isn't that like a why isn't that an option whenever we go into the office? Yeah. And there's incentives now. I've seen them in one use case. It was ah it was a hospital where, sorry, in hospitality, it was a hotel where they, the customer would track your energy consumption and reward you on it and give you the ability to actually participate in that reward.
00:23:21
Speaker
Yeah. So the ability, just the same way that, you know, some products did in residential where they show you the amount of x the amount of savings or sustainability savings to to be measurable in dollars or leaves or whatever the metric that you need, you know, building should have that.
00:23:37
Speaker
and And this is a conversation I'm having still with engineers that are building the space. you know, the thought is always, okay, have to build an envelope. It has to have this amount of energy. I should design for that amount of energy. What if there's a time where we the amount of energy is dynamic and your building design should be X but it should also dynamically switch based on the occupancy.
00:23:58
Speaker
yeah We don't have to have that set demand. I mean, we live in high density of data right now on the consumer side, but we're so slow in the energy demand of buildings. It's ah extremely slow. When I say slow, it's, you know, it fluctuates in 24 hours.
00:24:12
Speaker
Right now there's data rates in milli microseconds. Um, So that's where we're seeing the shift is, OK, if I design an envelope, I can design it with this criteria. But then if I have everything inside of the envelope measurable, I should be able to dynamically switch my energy rate and and be able to supply that back.
00:24:32
Speaker
at at a level of, or a speed where at least it makes sense to be able to shift it around the world, when what where I think it's important. do you think So I think like we've we've all seen, you know, numbers and infographics around like buildings, you know, building systems and like the rough percentage of of of energy impact. Like HVAC is usually around like 60%, lighting is 20%, you know, um people moving in lifts are like 10% and then and then everything else.
00:25:03
Speaker
um So HVAC is like, that's that's the biggest chunk. Conditioning is like the biggest chunk that we can that we can influence. And traditionally, you know a BMS system would would only kind of have, they kind of have like blinders on, right? Like they't they could only see what they could see. um And a lot of HVAC systems are like not zoned down to room level.
00:25:26
Speaker
um you know maybe they have PIR sensors at a very rudimentary level that are that are telling them you know occupancy or you know something's moving in the space do you see customers like leaning in on in that area of you know demanding from their their landlords or building you know building owners around how they can lower their energy impact
00:25:54
Speaker
Not yet. I think customers, especially not anchor tenants, they're they're using the base build energy as, okay, I'm going to get what I get and I'm going to use it for base design. And maybe this should be my minimum because that's the level of, you know,
00:26:09
Speaker
That's the level of technology we have in the space. Remember, you know if unless you're an anchor tenant, you can't really dictate how much energy you need in the building. But if you're a tenant, you get a base built or you get a base energy level from the building. And your job is either to augment that to create the comfort.
00:26:26
Speaker
And that's the level of optimization that we're seeing customers do. Maybe their eco mode is go to base building and that's probably the least amount of they're going to pay until the building catches up. Because some of these buildings are just historical historically or basically just in construction. It's hard to change the infrastructure. It'll save time. Like like they like they might have you know floor level zoning or you know maybe like neighborhoods, but not down to not like VAVs, like per conference rooms or something like that.
00:26:55
Speaker
Yeah, so they'll opt in for the for the minimum energy that's required to the to the building or to the floor, and then they'll just adjust it around the way and make sure that they optimize that piece because that's the piece they can control.
00:27:07
Speaker
Yeah. And we're seeing a shift around, okay if that's if I'm a tenant and my next tenant is saying that the following tenant and the rest of the floor is the same way, can now the BMS, which you know for decades and years has only been a glorified HVAC controller, can it now look at other ecosystems? And and there are some out there that are actually doing that.
00:27:29
Speaker
to get them into a position where they can actually control the the the building rather than just my only portion of HVAC or portion of lighting or portion of silos. yeah Because I think that's been the challenge is we're only been focused on specific, like when we do self-driving cars, we don't just have a self-driving wheel controller and a self-driving engine controller. It's self-driving car.
00:27:51
Speaker
And we've been driving pieces of the puzzle and we're making those pieces smart. Now it's time to actually put an FSD bug. Okay, go. yeah Yeah. Well, and and and that's a good that's a good metaphor, like self-driving car, because like whether it's ah whether it's an EV or an ICE vehicle, um like get we kind of we kind of have our own like triple net lease structure with vehicles, like right? like We're responsible for the vehicle cost, the maintenance, and the energy, whether that's you know gasoline, diesel, or electrons.
00:28:23
Speaker
Yeah.
Tenant Control and Building Technology
00:28:25
Speaker
Right. Building buildings are the same way. Like most, but would you say like most customers have a triple net lease, right? To where so totally yeah they're paying for the energy that they use. But in a lot of cases, they're handicapped by the base building system or the building infrastructure of not having like visibility or control over that energy that they're paying for. Totally. I i do see that that's a major impact. And it too it comes from just the cycle of of doing construction business, right? Yeah. You know, in in cars or electronics, you have the the luxury or the ability to just switch and say, okay, maybe i don't want this consumer device, maybe a phone or a laptop, and I can easily switch it.
00:29:08
Speaker
Think of a building, right? You don't get to make the choice to change the infrastructure. It takes five years at minimum to do a refresh. Yeah. Maybe sometimes seven. And if you're in a long lease, you take 12 years to make a decision.
00:29:19
Speaker
yeah Now we're seeing a lot of those infrastructure changes because customers are, one, went through the cycle. If they haven't done it pre-pandemic, they've been through the pandemic and now they're at the level of, okay, I do have no choice because a lot of leases are expiring and I have to make a decision, but they're being informed around, okay, what level of construction should I be using and what level of product or infrastructure I need to put in my building to support this ecosystem change.
00:29:47
Speaker
yeah Or even like what one one thing that we've at Cisco, and it's kind of weird to think of a technology company and getting involved in like lease consultation, but like we're helping customers understand what they can negotiate in terms of lease around like BMS or base building system partitioning, right? So that they can actually get, you know, API access to, you know, whether it's through BACnet, you know, REST API, Modbus, like whatever.
00:30:17
Speaker
like to their like little slice of um of a base building systems. Yes, we, yes, sir absolutely. um We've been seeing ah use cases where even like ah for example, radiometers on the rooftop to do shade automation.
00:30:32
Speaker
As a tenant before you didn't have access to that because there was no riser and you probably didn't have access to the roof. And now because of automation of technology, you know, sensors on them um the window covering and ability to change the base building and and having control over the BMS, those are conversations that tenants are having where landlords have to make some of these modifications to accommodate for the technology that's in play.
00:30:57
Speaker
I mean, it was different than when customers were asking for 5G cell service at the 40th floor. yep That was the only choice. That was the only choice. And now we have now we have, you know, carrier offload and open roaming.
00:31:09
Speaker
And that that's really interesting. So I had a conversation with a customer last week while I was in um well was in Melbourne, Cisco Live, Melbourne, and Australia, which, man, you're going to talk about like ah like the ultimate ultimate jet lag experience. it took It took me all weekend. I got home i got back home on Friday, and it took me all weekend to recover. like Last night was the first night that I had a good night's sleep.
00:31:33
Speaker
um But like I was having having a conversation with this customer and they're in retail around, you know, around Daz versus like Wi-Fi and open roaming. And, you know, for Daz, it's very, very attractive. And and providers are are motivated to subsidize that because providers get data out of that.
00:31:58
Speaker
Like they get they get like you know customer acquisition data from you know from associating to DAS. Whereas, especially in retail, you can see the same thing for you know commercial office space, hospitality, healthcare. care If you think about like building out your infrastructure with the capabilities for um for Wi-Fi offload, then the customer gets to keep all of that client data.
00:32:27
Speaker
Like they get, you know, they can, they can do, you know, mobile push notifications and, you know, and, and like, you know, sentiment analysis and things like that, because, you know, they're on their network versus the provider's network.
00:32:41
Speaker
Very interesting. did not know that. Yeah. So I know like Daz is a very popular like in building wireless, you know, solution.
00:32:52
Speaker
um But, you know, Wi-Fi can do can do the same thing yeah and more. Exactly. And it puts a little bit more like control and data like back in the hands of um of the of the tenant.
00:33:07
Speaker
Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. um Any other, so so you guys had, I think while I was in Melbourne last week, I saw some photos pop up on LinkedIn or something like that. And I had like other side of the globe, FOMO.
00:33:20
Speaker
um You guys had like a real estate and whiskey event in and New York. Yeah, designing partner is a two-day event. The designing board members met on Wednesday. And that was yeah board you know, obviously changed the ecosystem and helped the designing partners. But Thursday, we had the bourbon tasting by Ada sponsored. And Yeah, it was it was amazing conversations. Obviously, we didn't tell people. No, I'm just kidding. We did tell people. You saved the whiskey for the second day, though.
00:33:53
Speaker
Yeah. We'll stick around and we'll sure we drink whiskey. It was amazing. Great conversation. Yes, we had few selections, obviously, in the whiskey part. but Yeah. the The objective was to bring you open minded conversations in obviously the the major hub, which is New York City, and allowing some of these partners to come in with an open minded and have a conversation around.
00:34:19
Speaker
Here's the ecosystem. Here's where we are. it's been you know years now. We've seen ups and downs in ecosystem providers, products, partners. And just, you know, opened the mic and let them tell us what went right, tell us what went wrong, brought, you know, panelists and conversation and kept it really open. And then, you know, exchanged hands and took a lot of feedback and went to, you know, to that's the ah do some networking and and have some drinking piece. But it was a great conversation overall. And there's a lot of outcome.
00:34:50
Speaker
Yeah. most of it around the ability to say, you know, when when you do a project and you especially, you know, you put your neck on the line, whether you're a stakeholder, you know, stakeholders range from, you know, you take the owner's level, it goes from owner's rep to MEPs, to architects, to GCs, to ECs, to low voltage, to products, to partners.
00:35:10
Speaker
You know, you have a lot on the line and you have a lot of stakeholders that need to, I don't want to say change mindset, but just adopt to a decision that you know an owner can make sometimes or a stakeholder can make. And I think some of these decisions, when we see the progress of projects and the size and the ability to showcase the outcome.
00:35:30
Speaker
At the end of the day, we are here for a reason, because the outcome is greater than any, i would i wouldn't call it, obviously, there's greater outcomes that related to energy saving comfort, et cetera.
00:35:42
Speaker
But you look at the overall build space and allowing us to showcase some of the use cases, it's only getting better, honestly. it's It's showcasing that, yes, with this technology, we're going to really change the way construction has been done. Yes, but we've been saying it for a while, yeah but guess what? No building has stood up and went down at the same time. You have to you have to have a building for a long time to showcase the analysis, the progress, the the reasoning, and we're here. We're showcasing customer success, stories,
00:36:13
Speaker
use cases and even more now, here's why we you did it earlier and here's the benefits that you get now. When we talked about future proofing, nobody knew what AI was like yeah six years ago. and Maybe we did, but we just didn't tell people.
00:36:26
Speaker
And then now we're in agentics and we're in areas where you can do analytics much quicker. You can do predictive maintenance much faster. You can have specific level of integrations and comfort because you are on the same network.
00:36:38
Speaker
These are conversations you couldn't tell somebody five, six years ago. They had no clue what that meant. Or maybe if they did, they would just, it was not month it was not monetary. they They couldn't see the value. But now you look at it, it's much more relevant conversation around, okay, if every light, Mr. Customer was a data point, if every v shade was a data point, if every desk was a data point.
00:37:00
Speaker
And by the way, it's so on the same network that you would have put your access point and your microphone and speaker and collaboration device and cameras. Oh, how does that look for a data structure? Yeah. one One network to rule them all.
00:37:13
Speaker
and And I do think that... um and like when when we When Cisco started this like next evolution or generation of smart buildings, and it was really nice that we had Pen1 as a showcase and then you know Atlanta and London and Paris and bla blah, blah, blah.
00:37:31
Speaker
But um, the proof really comes out and the value comes out is when we see our customers like taking like this next step into, you know, into, into smart spaces, whether that's, you know, the project that you had with, you know, with Mauser and Fort Worth, or we just, I think just this past week, Cisco, um like we released a couple of case studies or customer, customer wins with TripAdvisor, um and with Clark County around like how they've,
00:38:00
Speaker
integrated technology earlier in the design process and was it a little disruptive? Totally. Right. Like, like no one is going to deny that it's disruptive to how buildings have been designed and built for the past 150 years.
00:38:13
Speaker
But the net effect is ah better visibility into infrastructure and having that data to make, you know, to to make decisions going forward.
00:38:24
Speaker
agree. Yeah. And you, and you mentioned, um, so you had the sort of the whiskey and CRE advisory group later in the week. Um, but you, you, you kind of, you did double duty last week.
00:38:36
Speaker
I did. It was partner summit. Cisco partner summit. Yeah. Yeah. And, and those were kind of probably two, you know, two very maybe polar opposite, uh, audiences, right. Of like traditional it t reseller versus, you know, versus, you know, a design and approach like,
00:38:54
Speaker
Did you feel from partner summit that that side of the house is getting in the getting in the telegram?
Global Real Estate Technology Insights
00:39:01
Speaker
Absolutely. I think, well, at least a few. um The motion is is is there. Part of the accelerator program is to educate the the partner ecosystem and allow them to participate in this motion, knowing that obviously this motion is going to help them.
00:39:17
Speaker
And surrounding some of that education piece around, okay, it starts with what's in it for me. I mean, every customer, every partner, every person as a human being, right? It's the conversation always what's in it for me and allowing them to see what's in it for them, which is one,
00:39:34
Speaker
the ability to have stickiness, whether it's around, you know, their own products now that they're positioning for their customers, ability to stay relevant because most of their customers are asking these questions. And and some of them are actually involved in deals. They don't know.
00:39:46
Speaker
They just get dragged into the deal when it comes to execution time. And we want them to be part of the deal when it comes to design and early on stages, because that's when you actually win big and you win but you want larger projects.
00:39:58
Speaker
You know, it even comes came through with an actual award. Dang. Nice. You got some glass. I did some glass. yeah but we We got the ecosystem of excellence around Future Proof Workplace. And I think that's an honor for us.
00:40:14
Speaker
Jason Gallo and the team, Tara, Andreas, Rob, you know, the the ability to to be there, to have the conversations, to work on next steps and um be be present and be recognized. I think it's an honor and it's a grateful opportunity that we have be there.
00:40:30
Speaker
be able to part of the ecosystem and showcase right the growth, the success, and celebrate the wins and you know focus on the feedback. When there is opportunities where we can do better, by all means, it's you know we are technology that's growing. of ah I've seen it in the LED days. I still remember it.
00:40:47
Speaker
and We started in condescent lighting in 2009. 2010, I was shipping product at one door and it would come back to the other door. Only because the LEDs couldn't withstand being in the heat for so long. And people thought that happens. And look at us now. I don't think I've seen ah design of a building or in general without being LEDs.
00:41:06
Speaker
And yeah this trend or this technology is now is's not going to be any different. It's just a matter of time. Again, it's just the way we do business in construction. It just takes so long. Yeah. and and And I think like one thing that's important about that that ecosystem concept is I almost think about it as like making the table bigger, right? And bringing more people to the table.
00:41:27
Speaker
i was um So when when I was in Melbourne last week, I had the the the opportunity to go visit a ah customer and it was nice to get out of the convention center. Like it was a four or five, six block, you know, four or five block walk, you know, to to go visit this customer who's in the,
00:41:43
Speaker
you know, service, let's say a server provider space. And we met with their workplace technology team and their video surveillance team. And those those Those directors of those departments, like they knew each other, like in passing in the office, but they didn't realize like the data that each one of those you know the stakeholders had available. right like Workplace technology and IT, t like they have a lot of you know Wi-Fi, video conferencing you know data.
00:42:15
Speaker
And then the video surveillance team, like they manage cameras, access control, um you know, executive protection. Like they had they have they have a lot of other data sets, but those data sets were just like locked up in silos.
00:42:30
Speaker
So even just that one meeting with the customer, where we brought those two people, ah you know, into the into the same room and and talked about like what their pain points were. Like the video surveillance team, they're like, oh, like I could use some of that IT t data.
00:42:44
Speaker
And the workplace team was like, well, I could use some of that, you know, people counting data from, you know, from from surveillance cameras to enrich my, you know, my my my data sets.
00:42:54
Speaker
So I think like breaking down those silos a huge part of the ecosystem play Oh, 100%. And that's the that's huge. I mean, obviously, you talk about a jet lag, but think of you know think of the the level of the level of information and knowledge that you get to see on the other side of the world. I mean, if it is the other side of the world for me, it's definitely...
00:43:18
Speaker
Yeah, I am. 24 hours? Oh, man. It was a... yeah So going there um was not bad. like I slept really well like on the way to on the way to Melbourne. and um The only bad thing was I landed at 4 o'clock in the morning.
00:43:34
Speaker
So trying to find like something to do at 4 o'clock in the morning is challenging. i'll like yeah like An early check-in is usually 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning, not 4 a.m., ah So I just kind of like wandered around the city, got some fresh air, found a found a couple of like three cafes and then finally a breakfast place opened at at at seven. um but Yeah, it's tough, you know, going to a whole different country, not knowing anyone.
00:43:59
Speaker
Well, not having to call a friend at four o'clock in the morning. yeah Yeah, the great thing was like I have an awesome, awesome team over there and not at 4 a.m. But like in the afternoon, um my guy on my team, Jeff and and Rob, like they're both cyclists.
Conference Reflections and Personal Insights
00:44:18
Speaker
So we went for I went and rented breed a bike and we went for like a nice bike ride around around Melbourne, which is amazing. I dont think like the but best way to best way to fight jet lag is endorphins and try to like power, power through the day. Don't take a nap and then get a good night's sleep.
00:44:34
Speaker
That's amazing. That's awesome. Yeah. I think the the only other, just like, you know, thinking back over the past six months or so, There's another really good show but I went to um in in Denver with another one of like the Cisco Engineering Alliance partners, which which MHT and Ada are a part of, um with Panduit.
00:44:57
Speaker
So Panduit has this... um but It's either biannual, it's actually ah every every two years they have this this um conference called G-SIC, which I thought G-SIC was Global Systems Integrator Conference, but it actually stands for Grow, Share, and something else I can't remember right now.
00:45:19
Speaker
Okay. But the cool thing about that conference is- You said it's once every two years? Once every two years. and and the And the neat thing, like trying like you know like the metaphor for Cisco would be it be like partner summit um at the beginning of the week. And then they have their global sales conference at the end of the week.
00:45:36
Speaker
So I just went for the like sort of like their version of partner summit. And the amazing thing, and a lot of people think about Panduit as you know passive infrastructure, cabling, racks, patch panels, you know like all of the things that Quite frankly, a lot of times we like we take for granted in the in the built environment. But one area that we've leaned in a lot with Panduit is around um around fault managed power. And you know we had Mahmood, who's the the product management director you know on the Panduit side a couple of months ago on.
00:46:12
Speaker
So it was great to be able to you know to present to ah pretty large audience, 1,000-plus people like with Panduit, like what the Panduit plus Cisco FMP power over Ethernet-like story is is all about.
00:46:26
Speaker
um But the audience, like Panduit's audience, they're there that... I think they're kind of like that magical audience of integrators, general contractors, MEP firms.
00:46:39
Speaker
like It's a really broad audience that Cisco is like a technology company. like We usually get like access to like IT integrators, and then we're building that you know this bigger ecosystem.
00:46:51
Speaker
Like at Panduit, man, like I learned all about... And you know this space, like manufacturers, reps. yeah um you know what do i that they like They're like an extension of you know of like a manufacturer, whether MHT, Salesforce,
00:47:07
Speaker
um that kind of foreign to Cisco. Like we have our, we have our channel, like our resellers, but, um, it seems like there's a ah little bit less exclusivity on our side versus on the manufacturer's rep side. Is that a good way to sum that up? Yeah. The VAR system is eat what you kill. The manufacturer's rep is exclusive territory.
00:47:28
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the technology world, you know, in ADA side, we have the VAR system and the traditional lighting system is even, you know, different because you have lighting reps and then in the technology side, have manufacturer's reps and then you have distribution and you have VAR.
00:47:42
Speaker
Yeah. Way different go-to-market, you know, got got the... benefit, I guess, or a curse to be working with all. yeah But it it is it is quite different of all channels of how to go to market.
00:47:55
Speaker
a lot of pros, obviously, and cons for each of them, but you know it's a It's how the the world works, right? yeah Regardless of the buyer personas, they you still touch on areas where you do business the traditional way or the VAR way, plus DST, plus manufacturers rep, light lighting rep, plus dealers in furniture and shading. So there's all kinds of ways that each of these industries, again, transact to the buyer.
00:48:21
Speaker
and And it's just the way we've done business forever. Yeah.
Global Ecosystem and Future Outlook
00:48:26
Speaker
The message is getting out there though. Like I remember probably two years ago now, Mahmood Ibrahim with, with Panda and I, like we presented to a consultant forum and, know, we just got like a a show of hands, like how many people have heard of all managed power class, you know, class four power. And it was like, it was kind of crickets.
00:48:46
Speaker
And, um at G sick, three three or four weeks ago in Denver. um Denise Lee at Cisco, she's our VP of the Engineering Sustainability Office and is the prime sponsor for Engineering Alliances and then all this work that we're doing around around like, you know, Real Estate Accelerator.
00:49:07
Speaker
She had like the day two keynote, so like a room full of you people
00:49:14
Speaker
you know integrators, specifiers, ECs, GCs, MEP firms. And she asked that same question, like how many people have heard about you know fault managed power?
00:49:25
Speaker
And I would say 80% of the room across those different personas raised their hand. And to me, that's like an acknowledgement that number one, we got an energy problem. Number two, there's a technology that can help us, you know, solve some of the the problems around around energy.
00:49:45
Speaker
Absolutely. And I'm glad that that's, you know, that's there because we're seeing it. You know, every conversation is around energy data optimization and occupancy.
00:49:57
Speaker
You know, when I was at Partner Summit um this year, you know, but two things I learned, right? How um Tim had Chuck having Subway for for lunch before, yeah you know, going on a customer dinner and Chuck asking people, asking the partners to to have ah an actual Splunk practice. And I'm hoping in the next year or two, we will have Chuck saying, i want all the partners to have a real estate practice.
00:50:22
Speaker
Yes. Because that's that's the next logical move, right? where' We're seeing the move. Partners are on board. We're going to get there. And now it's now it's the time. ye Well, and and and like so Partner Summit, it was like to the week before i was in Melbourne.
00:50:39
Speaker
And i think whenever that like keynote or address happened, whether it was Chuck or G2, there was something to the effect of like your, for partners, for resale partners, like your fastest path of revenue Splunk.
00:50:53
Speaker
And to me, that's like data is your fastest path to revenue. And then real estate is like the use case for that, that data infrastructure.
00:51:04
Speaker
Yes. So like there's, there's, there's, there's a thread there. Yeah. ah yeah but That's exactly right. Yeah. And you know, the, the ecosystem, you know, is, is extended like that. We talked about like all the great stuff that's happening in the Americas and APJ,
00:51:19
Speaker
um Sam Wood on our team really spearheaded a great show in EMEA at this at this UK smart building show where we showed up with um Schneider Electric and the the intelligent ready building, you know, architecture that we've you know been working on with them over the over the past couple of years.
00:51:40
Speaker
um So it's it's ah it's not it's not localized like this is a this is kind of a global problem. Absolutely. Yeah. We're dealing with all theaters, as you know, and yeah one theater at a time. and we're giving we're seeing the traction from from all aspects, right? Customers have demands regardless of where they live.
00:51:59
Speaker
and Most of our customers have presence, as you know, in all different theaters. Cool. Well, um this has been this has been like a really fast catch up. AK, I know that we've we've been we've been running pretty hard for the past you know three or four months with conferences and things like that. it's great to for for just you and I to spend a little bit of time and share what is is top of mind for for for us going ah going into the holiday season.
00:52:26
Speaker
Same here. I think it's exciting time. We're getting to what I call it a wind down for a lot of people, but you know, yeah we, we take every, every day on its own. And I think it's, it's going to be an exciting year to finish, to go through. And yes, I, I think it's, it's good to catch up. Obviously we we talk and I feel like sometimes we talk often, but at the same time we don't get to catch up.
00:52:49
Speaker
Yep. Cool. All right. Cheers, man. Cheers.
00:52:54
Speaker
All everybody. Thanks for hanging with us. Follow the show, like, and subscribe. We'll put a bunch of like links in the show notes for you to to dig a little bit deeper, um but we'll see you in a couple of weeks.