Technological innovation is radically changing how and where we choose to work, live and play, essentially forcing us to rethink the built environment—and our place in it.
From broad access to WiFi and the ubiquity of smartphones to ever-lighter laptops and more powerful tablet devices, technology has created an inextricably connected world. With the virtual barrier between work and home all but gone, the way we think about real estate is fundamentally changing, says Elie Finegold, senior vice president of global innovation and business intelligence at CBRE.
“This industrial-era concept that there is a separation between work and home is becoming increasingly less relevant,” says Finegold. “Because you can work from anywhere, space has become more fungible.”
Finegold, an innovator and entrepreneur with expertise in real estate and technology, says there are three emerging trends reshaping the way people will use real estate in the future.
1. Radical mobility
The ability of people and machines to work from anywhere is transforming the utilization of traditional spaces. “If you conduct a survey and ask people, ‘Have you worked in a living room, a bedroom, a plane, an office, an elevator, somebody else’s house—even a bathroom?’ everyone is going to answer yes to almost every one of them,” Finegold says.
“There’s a whole set of tasks that were once capable of only being done in an office that we can now do from anywhere, and though working face-to-face with others will likely never become obsolete, companies are going to be looking for much more adaptable real estate frameworks as a way of managing both flex in the workforce and the diversity of working habits,” he adds.
By 2020, 40 percent of workers in the U.S. will be self-employed as freelancers, contractors or temp employees, which will further affect the role—and primacy—of traditional office space, says Finegold.
2. Collaborative economy
As people increasingly choose to share and crowdsource goods, services, funding and transportation, the real estate market must adapt to new ways of distributing demands, Finegold says.
The sharing economy created affordable solutions for consumers during the Great Recession and has offered unique income streams for people who need extra cash or more flexible work situations. For instance, Airbnb and Uber have enabled people to turn their homes and vehicles into sources of income.
As people migrate to cities, they may prefer to rent apartments or cars rather than own them. Similarly, if more people are going into business for themselves as freelancers or contractors, the demand for coworking spaces could outweigh the need for traditional office space.
3. Transportation revolution
The rise of autonomous vehicles and transportation—self-driving cars, multi-modal trucking, distribution drones, etc.—coupled with collaborative models like Uber, will make it easier for people and goods to move around more freely. It may also ultimately change infrastructure needs, Finegold says, cutting down on the number of cars on the road or in parking lots at any given moment, while simultaneously creating a competitive market for space utilization.
“There will be huge opportunities for redevelopment of spaces previously used for personal vehicles, from streetside parking spots to multilevel parking decks,” Finegold says.
While some of these trends may be in the distant future, aspects of all three already exist, and they are quickly creating new modes for people to access real estate, Finegold says.
“If you take all of these things together, they are breaking down traditional work/life balances and changing the real estate landscape,” Finegold says. “Companies are attracted to places where there are live/work opportunities for employees.”
All the things that make Microsoft Surface devices attractive to consumers — lightweight design, ability to use both touch and keyboard, the ease and familiarity of Windows — make them appealing to enterprise users as well. But devices used in the workplace must also meet enterprise requirements for internal network security, industry-specific software functionality, and manageability across a large and often widely distributed workforce. Today, Microsoft announced a new Surface Enterprise Initiative, kicking off with an expanded partnership with Dell to deliver premium Windows 10 devices and word-class services and support to enterprise customers.
Under the expanded partnership, Dell will sell Surface Pro 3 devices and accessories and offer service and support through its commercial sales organization, making it easier for businesses to deploy Surface devices as part of their enterprisewide hardware mix. Microsoft also plans to leverage our longstanding relationships with HP, Accenture and Avanade to enable more customers to enjoy the benefits of Windows 10.
Many enterprise customers have already deployed Surface across a wide range of industries including healthcare, banks and financial services, manufacturing and more. In the airline industry, Austrian Airlines and Lufthansa are adopting Surface devices to help eliminate the use of paper in cockpit procedures — particularly during takeoff and landing, when laptops cannot be used. Automotive sales company Infiniti retail group UK has streamlined the car-buying experience by using Surface devices for every step of the process, replacing everything from brochures to the sales desk and creating a unique retail experience.
The Surface Enterprise Initiative will make it easier for even more companies to ensure individual employees have exactly the right devices for the job. Retail sales associates can use Surface to suggest related purchases, order additional stock and close sales right on the showroom floor. Manufacturing plant managers can respond to email, document equipment inspections and update production forecasts from a single device. And financial executives can monitor client accounts and prepare audit reports, secure in the knowledge that their devices and apps comply with industry regulations.
Announcing the preview of Skype for Business apps for iOS and Android
Today’s post was written by Jared Goralnick, principal group program manager for the Skype for Business team as written on Office Blogs.
We’ve seen great momentum in the first few months since the arrival of Skype for Business, and today, I’m excited to announce the preview of the new Skype for Business apps for iOS and Android. Here’s a look at what’s new and how you can participate in the preview.
What’s new?
We’ve infused Skype simplicity throughout the new iOS and Android apps, created a new dashboard for easy navigation of your contacts, calls and meetings, and updated the In-Call and In-Meeting experience.
The updated dashboard brings the contact search bar, your upcoming meetings and most recent conversations to one place.
Contact search bar—Search your Global Address List by first name, last name, email alias or even a phone number! On iOS, your phone contacts are also included in the search.
Upcoming appointments—Here you can see your current and next meetings in your calendar. You can either click through to read more about the meeting or click the Quick Join icon to join the meeting right away.
Recent conversations—Makes it easy to refer back to your most recent chats, phone calls and meetings.
We rebuilt the In-Call and In-Meeting experience with new features that make it easier to navigate calls and meetings on your mobile phone or tablet.
Larger buttons make it easier to mute, add participants and manage your call.
Video, which now fills the screen, brings you closer to your colleagues.
We made it easier to navigate between video and content with just one tap by simplifying the IM, video and content panes. While you can still view content in full screen, you can now also view content and see the speaker’s video at the same time!
Join our preview
If you have Lync 2013 on your iOS or Android device, you’ll get the new Skype for Business app as an update later this year. Skype for Business mobile apps work for anyone on Lync Server 2013, Skype for Business Server 2015 and Skype for Business Online.
To ensure IT administrators can prepare their end users and organizations for this change, we’ve added our Skype for Business iOS and Android apps to our Skype for Business Preview program.
To participate in the preview, IT administrators can visit www.skypepreview.com to nominate up to four end users for iOS and four for Android to participate in the preview. Please apply by Friday, August 14, 2015 to be considered in our first batch of participants. We will begin notifying IT admins via email of their acceptance starting the week of August 17, 2015.
by Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office Client Applications and Services team
Today I’m pleased to announce the general availability of the new Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps for Android phone. These join our previously released Office apps for Android tablets to complete the Office experience for the millions of Android users around the world. Download Word, Excel and PowerPoint on your Android phone today to get started.
Office for Android phone is here
Five weeks ago, we announced the Office for Android phone preview. We are so grateful to our preview users, and with their help we were able to test the apps on over 1,900 different Android phone models in 83 countries. During the preview, we heard from thousands of these users, and over the last few weeks we were able to incorporate a lot of their feedback into the apps we’re launching today. For example, we made it easier to connect to other popular third-party storage offerings like Google Drive and Box, as well as many usability adjustments to make it easier to navigate commands within the apps.
Here are a few of my favorite aspects of our new Android phone apps:
On the go reviews and edits—I often need to squeeze in quick reviews in between appointments during the day. I can review documents in full fidelity, read comments and then easily add my own.
Presenting from my phone—I love just bringing my phone to a meeting to present wirelessly. PowerPoint for Android phone gives me the same transitions, animations and design that I would have from my desktop, and I can even use inking to highlight important points while presenting.
Quick access to my documents—I can quickly find the document I was working on in the office from my phone. It even shows me where I was last working. Additionally, while I am a faithful OneDrive user, I can also access documents stored in Dropbox, Google Drive or Box with our support for third-party cloud storage providers.
Easy to get—We’ve partnered with over 30 global, regional and local OEMs such as Samsung, Sony, LG and many more, to pre-load these apps on Android devices. Many of these devices will be landing in retail stores later this year.
You can download the Word for Android, Excel for Android and PowerPoint for Android apps from the Google Play* store beginning today. We hope you enjoy using them as much as we enjoyed making them.
—Kirk Koenigsbauer
*Word, Excel, PowerPoint apps are available in the following app stores in China: Tencent, Baidu, Xiaomi, CMCC, and through the Samsung Galaxy Store worldwide.
“Android is a trademark of Google Inc. Google Play is a trademark of Google Inc.”
