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Rudy Reagin is Vice President of Corporate Technology sup-
porting Corporate Services within Deutsche Bank (DB). In
this role, he partners with the Corporate Real Estate team
to ensure initiatives are strategic and align with Deutsche fundamentally changing the way we work, relax, and interact
Bank’s 2020 objectives. Rudy has been with DB for 20 years,
supporting CRES for the past 12. He has a background in logistics,
finance, and human resources IT, which uniquely combine to
provide a well rounded perspective on the challenges facing
corporate real estate today.
Corporate Real Estate’s Greatest Challenges
The past twelve months have seen a number
of shifting priorities in the Corporate Real
Estate industry. Cyber attacks are on the rise
and security is an unending responsibility;
cloud infrastructures and better information
management tools have enabled companies to
gather data for better analytics; and there is an
increasing demand for contemporary workplace
designs, and systems to improve satisfaction and
improve utilization.
First and a critically important focal point
is Cyber Security. A presenter at a recent
Realcomm event described it as an arms race;
we need to continually modify and enhance our
preventative procedures to address the ever changing threats.
Security requires ongoing vigilance and focus; new defenses and
security measures must be constantly adapting to be effective.
Attacks are becoming more sophisticated, state sponsored hack-
ing attempts have increased the threat level, and beyond the
actual theft of information, data breaches can be disastrous to a
company’s reputation.
A second observation is the improved capability of companies
to produce analytics. Data warehouse structures have matured,
and this allows for the storage of information in such a way that
changes over time are recorded; we can see trends and recog-
nize patterns that allow us to better predict and plan for future
demand. Also, less expensive cloud infrastructures allow data to
be stored and accessed securely across the enterprise. “Big data”,
the storage of terabytes of information, was never too much of
a factor for CRE, however with the growing “Internet of Things”,
sensors and controllers are producing unprecedented amounts
of data, and tools have been developed to interrogate these
massive repositories.
Finally, there has been keen interest in space designs and
technologies to support the modern workforce; the latest gen-
erations entering the workforce are looking for greater mobility
as to where and how they work while companies are finding
that effective environments and collaboration tools can greatly
enhance productivity.
Future Technology Trends
Technology has long been a careening snowball, but several
technologies over the past few decades have accelerated the
pace. Communications and mobile devices (I can hardly call
them “phones” when they are in fact, handheld supercomputers)
have made communication and collaboration ubiquitous,
with others.
Internet of Things (IoT) – A direct outgrowth of this ubiqui-
tous environment is
the Internet of Things,
sensors and devices
interacting with each
other and ourselves.
Home assistants, natu- Rudy Reagin
ral language interfaces,
and surroundings that
react to our individual
preferences are be-
coming commonplace.
Standards facilitate
out-of-the-box com-
patibility across a range of products and services, reducing both
complexity and cost. The expectations of building occupants are
growing and people will soon expect this cognitive environment
to be seamless and almost transparent in its management of the
workplace.
Blockchain – My first reaction to Blockchain was “That’s some-
thing to do with Bitcoin, isn’t it?” and I wasn’t wrong, but that was
certainly a limited interpretation. Blockchain underlies Bitcoin,
but that’s a single application and the possibilities for managing
value assets through an immutable global ledger are limitless.
Blockchain has been described as the “Internet of Value” and self
administering contracts, financial transactions, and political votes
are but the tip of the iceberg. Given the three year window, I was
at first hesitant to include Blockchain, but of late, it seems all my
estimates are on the conservative side and the initial applications
that are rolling out on this platform are proving that this is truly a
disruptive and revolutionary development.
Autonomous Vehicles – Truly a watershed event, the
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