Post-COVID
The Global Digital Workplace Market Finds New Momentum
March 10th, 2022Hybrid Work & Climate Change to Drive the Evolution of Smart Buildings in 2022
January 4th, 2022Hybrid Work is Driving the Digital Workplace Market
Germany, Portugal, and Ireland are some of the first major economies to make remote work a mandatory option for all employees that can work remotely. Home office product sales have continued to grow despite our longest spell without mass lockdowns since the pandemic began. Even the question “are you working remotely?” has become commonplace in […]
Johnson Controls 2021 Annual Report Examined
Few publicly listed companies like Johnson Controls International (JCI), present a pure smart buildings product and service offering. Since the 2016 merger with Tyco, and the 2019 sale of its Power Solutions business to BCP Acquisitions LLC for $13.2 billion, the firm is looking to capitalize on macro-trends including decarbonization, post-pandemic focus on healthier buildings, and digital technologies. JCI […]
$180m Flows into Occupancy Analytics Companies as Market Anoints its First Unicorn
In the space of three days this week, two already well-funded Occupancy Analytics companies closed Series C and D rounds, underscoring (in case anyone was in doubt) investor confidence in the move to hybrid working driving demand for digital workplaces. On Monday, California-based Vergesense announced that it had closed a $60m Series C round led […]
Work is at an Unprecedented Junction with an Inevitable Conclusion
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the US workforce spent just 5% of their total working time remote from the office. By the spring of 2020, that figure had risen to 60% and remained at a similar level for over a year, according to an April 2021 special report by The Economist. In Europe, 89% of companies now […]
Buildings, Workplaces, & the Metaverse Future
Today Facebook officially rebranded as “Meta” underlining their clear intentions to become a leader in Metaverse development. The term “Metaverse” will no doubt trigger a new era of challenging explanations, potential applications, and endless hype within technological circles, just as we saw with the IoT, the cloud, the internet, or electricity. The term metaverse was […]
Hybrid Work Models Challenge Offices to Compete with Homes
Office occupancy has reached its highest levels since March 2020 over the past month. Driven by high vaccination rates and the return of children to school in major markets, September has recorded an 18-month high of 87% occupancy compared to pre-lockdown levels, according to data from Metrikus. We may still have turbulence ahead but this is […]
Funding Boom in a Maturing Occupancy Analytics Market
There is strong competition for both funding and projects as many startups and established players consolidate their position and vie for business in the occupancy analytics sector for commercial office space. With over 220 companies vying for business, the market for technology platforms that locate and map people and workspaces is crowded. Three startups, Density, Locatee and Mapiq have taken the […]
Energy Management is Still the Foundation of Smart Buildings
Once upon a time, smart buildings were all about energy management. Continuing pressure to cut costs and growing pressure to tackle climate change had converged to drive an energy efficiency revolution in buildings. At the heart of that revolution was smart technology, where sensor networks and big data software processed masses of information about the […]