Page 14 - RC19 RealcommEDGE 2019 Fall Issue

SPOTLIGHT: Workplace Innovation

ENABLING AND OPTIMIZING THE

SMART DIGITAL WORKPLACE

CHRIS FINE organizational challenges, but fortunately, new solutions
Senior Strategist, Workplace Innovation and approaches are becoming available to help.
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company
The Challenges: Complexity, Security and
The move toward smart workplaces—venues that Organizational Alignment
are interactive, responsive, and flexible—continues to The components of the Smart Digital Workplace revolve
accelerate, driven by major trends that are generational around three primary goals, centered on use cases:
in scope. As a result, organizations in a wide swath
of industries are increasing their investment in key • Better employee experiences such as wayfinding;
technologies and processes that enable a whole new way healthier and more productive, sustainable
of working, and savvy commercial and corporate real environments with respect to light, noise, and
estate professionals are taking note. climate; collaboration interfaces, such as audio-
video conferencing and speech recognition;
The key trends driving the shift toward the Smart Digital conference room- and workspace-booking; and
Workplace (SDW) are varied. First, and for the first time, visitor management.
four separate generations of workers simultaneously • Improved measurement and control from a building
comprise the workforce. Millennial and younger workers management perspective, such as space utilization,
represent a growing portion, whose workspace priorities environmentals, physical security and safety, and
can differ greatly from their colleagues. Competing physical layout.
for the best workers is therefore more complex, but • Rapid and flexible deployment of space with all the
one unifying factor that appeals to all groups is the organization’s requirements in place. This applies
promise of a better workplace experience. Second, the to the growing trend of Space as a Service and the
migration of enterprise technology to the cloud, with growing likelihood of enterprises partnering with
the accompanying increases in flexibility and mobility, providers of flexible space.
removes the fixed location of each worker. Third, agile
methods for software development, work processes, and The technologies required to achieve these goals are
workforce management require the ability to organize concentrated in three main areas: IoT, mobile apps and
work around projects and specific clients, rather than networking. Underlying the technologies are requirements
fixed enterprise-wide groups. Finally, the increased for data security and privacy. In order for all this to come
use of big data and AI requires gathering, measuring, together, the various stakeholders and organizational
analyzing and dissemination of ever-larger quantities of processes need to be aligned around the goals.
information.
Many enterprises and facility operators find that
All these trends are about fluidity, flexibility, rapid complexity and costs have been growing. For example:
response, collaboration, and global connectivity to meet
changing business and market needs. Real estate and IT • IoT systems are often not interoperable, requiring
professionals are seeking to build facilities and systems multiple types of connectivity, software protocols,
that meet these needs at a reasonable cost, without proprietary hardware, large numbers of single-purpose
sacrificing security, manageability, and other operating sensors, gateways, databases, and management
requirements. There are significant technical and systems. Multiple wireless networking standards—LTE

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