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Program notes

Rick Huijbregts is the Director of Real Estate Solutions for Cisco Emerging Markets. We discuss Cisco's "Connected Real Estate" initiative and its relationship to the "Buildings 2.0" concept.

The Cisco Connected Roundtable is a track devoted to these topics. "Driving a Vision for Connected Buildings" is this morning. And this afternoon is "A 360 Degree Look at Connected Buildings." Huijbregts, who organized these two sessions, tells us about the thinking behind them and how they link together.

We look back to last year's roundtable at BuilConn, and to a similar session held recently in Dubai. Europe has been faster to adopt building technologies, particular energy-saving innovations. We talk about Europe's adoption of these concepts in their built environments.

Transcript

Denis: Good morning, it's Tuesday, May 22, 2007, opening day for ConnectivityWeek in Chicago, IL. The focus for today's podcast is the Cisco Connected Roundtable track. I'm talking with Rick Huijbregts, who is the track leader. Good morning, Rick...

Rick: Good morning Denis.

Denis: Briefly what is Cisco Connected Real Estate? Give me the 30-second version.

Rick: Cisco connected real estate is a solution framework where we extend the value of the network that we currently put in buildings to support voice, video, data, wireless mobility technologies to enable people to be more productive and more efficient; but now to extend the value of the same network to all the systems and all the technologies that go into a building, including building automation systems, video surveillance systems, security systems, and access control systems. By tying everything to one common platform we now have the ability to create new rules and new dependencies between all these different systems.

Denis: What is the overlap between this and the buildings 2.0 concept? Are they basically the same thing?

Rick: It's very much aligned; I think with Cisco connected real estate we have, with industry organizations, tried to redefine the term Intelligent Buildings and look at what a smart or an Intelligent Building really means. We said at the end of the day it means a facility (a physical structure) that enables you to do whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it, and however you want to do it. With buildings 2.0 we've basically taken it to the next level in a vision perspective and said okay how does green as sustainability tie into all of this; including technology and how we really change the real estate industry, procurement methods and the ways of delivering, procuring and commissioning buildings like this, all the way to how we use it. It's kind of the all encompassing big picture.

Denis: You're the Director of Real Estate Solutions within Cisco Emerging Markets. What's your mission at Cisco?

Rick: My mission is to drive the connected real estate story and to develop solutions specific to that market segment, but then with an eye to real estate developers.

Denis: The Cisco Connected Roundtable is a whole track devoted to this topic. The morning session is "Driving a Vision for Connected Buildings." This session will be in a Town Meeting format; are you looking for audience interaction or input?

Rick: Yes very much so. We are a very large company, and we've been very expressive on what we envision the real estate industry to be, and how the network can play a big role. As we went into this, and increasingly so, we realized this is not one company or stakeholder determining what the future looks like. The morning session is important to us to make sure that we are all speaking the same language and the roadmaps we want to paint, in terms of how do we get to this end goal, how do we create a roadmap that we all prescribe to and that we all as an industry can help push the real estate industry in that direction.

Denis: This afternoon is “A 360 Degree Look at Connected Buildings.” What topics do you expect the panel to cover in that one?

Rick: Whereas in the morning we're really focusing on what is our shared vision -- how do we define buildings 2.0, where should we be in five or ten years from now, and how do we get there -- I think the afternoon session is more geared towards two components around that. One is the ecosystem and the stakeholders. Realizing that technology companies are one piece of the pie; we have architects, engineers, contractors. Then we have the building technologies companies, building systems companies; there are so many, it's such a fragmented and complex industry with so many stakeholders. We feel we need to start engaging discussion that, as we agree on the vision, how do we work together to get there. On one hand as we look at the number of stakeholders that we feel all need to come together, we also are looking at the technologies; specifically where the IT world and the building automation world is coming together to deliver these new and innovative spaces.

Denis: This is an ongoing effort and the second year for the roundtable at BuilConn. A year later, have you found significant progress toward adoption, or is it still early for that?

Rick: I would say it's still early, although in specific regions in the world and with specific first customers, we are seeing significant successes and tremendous examples that we believe will continue to drive the industry. Because the real estate industry is the largest industry in the world, probably the most complex, fragmented and also one that has possibly seen the least amount of innovation in the last 50 years; we're still more or less building space the same we did 50 years ago. We do not expect change and transformation overnight; this is going to be a long process with a lot of people that have to be aligned and convinced to see the benefit. As we are engaging now in our first project and customer success stories, those that actually started maybe a year or two ago we will now I think see an acceleration of adoption to this concept and model because the benefits are becoming tangible. We can actually show and prove why this next generation of intelligent buildings really drives down cost, improves productivity, enhances experience, has an impact on energy, and really touches all these aspects of our space.

Denis: You were at BuilConn in Dubai where there was a similar roundtable. Did you feel like the ideas were getting traction there?

Rick: Yeah, very much so, I think Dubai with the amount of construction and innovation that is happening there, at a speed that I think we've never seen anywhere before, allows us and the real estate industry to think outside of the box and take in a little bit of extra risk. So what we're seeing there is that all of the concerns and obstacles that are maybe still there in the western and developed worlds are just taken much quicker and overcome much easier.

Denis: Europe has been somewhat faster to adopt building technologies, particular energy-saving ones. There is a BuilConn in Amsterdam this fall, so there is obviously an opportunity to continue this conversation there in the Roundtables. Is this concept all that new in Europe?

Rick: Europe has come farther when it comes to energy issues and realizing that buildings are the biggest source of energy consumption, so they have to do something. But when it comes to pushing the network as the platform to the next level and now going to the next level of creating new spaces, and there is still a long way to go in Europe as well.

Denis: Well it's fascinating to see this developing as such a global dialog.

Rick: Well, to your point about continuing the dialog, for us this is like we've gone after a number of exciting advanced technologies that we feel compliment the Cisco vision. Telephony would be one of them, now physical security is another one of them. All of it really kind of accumulates to the bigger picture, which is how can we help shape the buildings in which we live, work or play; but also the communities in which we build these buildings and the cities in which we have those communities, all the way to how can we help transform countries, and transform how people live and grow within these countries.

Denis: That's a lofty goal, I hope you're successful. Rick Huijbregts is leader of the Cisco Connected Roundtable track starting at 9:00 this morning. Rick, thanks very much for joining us.

Rick: Thank you Denis.

Denis: That's our program for Tuesday, May 22, 2007. Tune in tomorrow morning for the next connectivity week insight Podcast. My guest will be Carter Williams, President of Gridlogix.