Cisco wanted to modernize its underutilized and outdated actual property portfolio to assist new and future methods of working. By leveraging its personaldistinctive networking and collaboration applied sciences, Cisco was in a position to rework its PENN 1e house in New York Metropolis into a sensible, data-driven surroundings that optimizes house utilization, improves consumer expertise, and serves as a mannequin for Cisco places of work worldwide.
In as we speak’s world the place many workers can work from wherever with a steady web connection, getting workers into an workplace may be a battle. Why drive if you can sit comfortably in your personal house (and sweatpants)? This employee mentality catapulted into fruition with the pandemic. Years later, the workplace is now not the first-choice house for a lot of employees. Actually, it should “earn” the commute. So, how did we create an workplace that workers need to and revel in going to with out a mandate?
Rightsizing actual property in a post-pandemic world
For years, our actual property portfolio had been underutilized and outdated. We knew this even previous to the pandemic after I started main the Good Constructing enterprise at Cisco. However the pandemic introduced additional readability. With the altering insurance policies, we noticed a higher must downsize, and discover solutions to questions we by no means had to consider corresponding to:
- How many individuals are utilizing a sure ground at any given time?
- What’s the air high quality of the utilized areas?
- If an worker makes the commute to an workplace, will a workspace be accessible to them?
- Will I be capable of work comfortably and effectively whereas I’m within the workplace?
We knew the information we wanted to reply these questions and make knowledgeable choices existed on the wi-fi community. Nevertheless, it wasn’t available or simple to entry. So as a substitute of counting on inconsistent badging knowledge, we started to take a look at how we might use the community to unify the disparate elements throughout our infrastructure and visualize spatial knowledge so we might harness the complete energy of the Cisco know-how in our places of work. And we had the proper workplace to start out with— PENN 1 in New York Metropolis.
Divesting to speculate
Our formal design course of sometimes concerned our companions, together with architects and Mechanical Electrical Plumbing (MEB) corporations. Nevertheless, when that was halted because of the pandemic, we introduced the method inside Cisco and began eager about the issue in another way and put the tip consumer expertise first. We knew that the best way we used house was ceaselessly going to alter, and the notion of “divest to speculate” was constructed inside the finance group. The purpose was to put money into key workplace places and create hubs versus a number of underutilized areas.
Because it sometimes goes, organizations transition portfolio by way of house each ten to fifteen years — the usual size of a company lease. As a part of this pure evolution and “divest to speculate” technique, we selected to close down seven places of work across the New York Metropolis space to put money into the modernization of PENN 1 and our new hybrid work mannequin. The purpose was to create an workplace that may be a magnet for workers and clients, a spot they might come to collaborate, meet, rejoice, and extra.
To get began, we took a unique method than typical. As an alternative of designing the know-how across the house, we constructed the house round the know-how. We introduced collectively the perfect collective information of numerous minds and experiences from Cisco IT and Office Sources (WPR) to discover a method to unify our know-how and create a platform that may be versatile sufficient to adapt to the longer term. We wished to make sure we might simply make modifications and improve the know-how over time with out the necessity to rebuild an workplace.
Unlocking the information for insights and motion
To do that, we wanted to get a greater understanding of how the house was getting used, and how much infrastructure we might leverage to get perception, whereas guaranteeing the worker expertise can be the perfect that it may very well be. It wasn’t simply in regards to the house. It was additionally in regards to the new methods of working, our sustainability and wellness targets, in addition to making the crucial knowledge accessible to the precise groups to assist these initiatives. If we did it proper, we’d create a workspace that would scale for future wants and tendencies.
Right here’s the gorgeous factor. With our highly effective portfolio of networking, collaboration, and safety options — this knowledge already existed in our IT surroundings, we simply wanted to unify it to bridge the hole between Operational Know-how (OT,) Data Know-how (IT,) and actual property. We had been in a position to do that with Cisco Areas, which allowed us to extract and mixture the information in a method that made sense and was reportable to ship outcomes for everybody.
Cisco Areas is a single scalable, dependable cloud platform that digitizes house and makes them safer, smarter, extra sustainable, whereas delivering seamless experiences.
Implementing Cisco Areas at Penn 1
Cisco Areas integrates the information from the community and collaboration gadgets and visualizes it right into a customizable dashboard to tailor to the wants of the precise groups extracting the information for his or her individualized targets. We unified knowledge throughout the complete Cisco portfolio utilizing:
- Cisco Areas: PENN 1 finish customers have a 3D floorplan enabling insights into occupancy, air high quality, CO2 ranges, temperature and humidity, and the power to view and maintain open workspaces and rooms. It runs on Webex collaboration gadgets all through the power.
- Cisco Catalyst 9000 switches and entry factors: 43 Cisco Catalyst 9166 Wi-Fi 6E APs are deployed in a high-density design to offer wonderful protection and seamless roaming and maximize location-detection capabilities to permit Cisco Areas to observe occupancy in numerous areas of the ground. They’re additionally outfitted with built-in temperature, humidity, and air high quality (VoC) sensors to offer knowledge on environmental efficiency.
- Cisco Collaboration Units The PENN 1 workplace is supplied with 92 Cisco collaboration gadgets (Desk Professionals, Desk Cameras, Precision Cameras, Room Bars, Room Kits, and Board Professionals) to make sure each house is video enabled for an inclusive hybrid work expertise. Cisco Room Navigators allow seamless room reserving, calendar view, assembly data, and assembly extension with real-time occupancy visualization.
- Cisco Meraki sensible cameras: The 27 Meraki MV12 cameras carry bodily safety and superior analytics and insights.
- PoE (Energy over Ethernet): We energy every little thing from lighting and shades to environmental circumstances over the community and accumulate sensor knowledge to feed into Cisco Areas and energy the Good Workspaces utility.
By combining these Cisco merchandise and options, it allowed us to create superb worker experiences that ship a sustainable, but optimistic working surroundings, conducive to each collaboration and particular person work.
Delivering outcomes throughout the enterprise
With the brand new hybrid work design, we decreased the ground plan of PENN 1 by 25% by house optimization. Each room was constructed with function to amplify the intersection of individuals and house, whatever the office anybody is bodily in. We used the information from our complete know-how stack to energy quite a few outcomes and advantages together with:
- Blended presence enablement: 100% of areas within the new workplace at the moment are video enabled, and we elevated the variety of collaboration areas by 40%. We’re connecting folks in new methods once they’re within the workplace, whereas nonetheless being inclusive of distant members, as 98% of conferences may have no less than one distant participant.
- Area optimization: We enabled 2X the variety of folks to be seated in half the house, with quite a lot of completely different room designs tailor-made to cater to quite a lot of completely different working kinds and desires, with out compromising consumer expertise.
- Wellness and consumer expertise: With 20% of the world’s inhabitants being neurodiverse, we designed the workplace to cater to various sensory and house wants with acoustics and personalised gentle and temperature controls.
- Vitality effectivity and sustainability: Vitality decreased by 36% purely from the change in design, with out making an allowance for the ground plan discount. We turned all linked endpoints into an vitality networking micro-power grid that’s absolutely tracked, managed, and monitored and eradicated the necessity for 3,000 lbs (about 1360.78 kg). of metal and 1,000 lbs. of copper wiring materials by deploying PoE infrastructure.
- Price effectivity: We skilled a 5% discount in CapEx, and saved $250k in development prices.
1 is now a real testomony to the distinctive energy of our portfolio, and the outcomes enabled by the unification of networking with collaboration and safety. With superb experiences turning into the norm for our workforce and easy accessibility to data-driven insights for knowledgeable enterprise choice making, the office is absolutely outfitted to face the check of time and ship outcomes for workers, clients, IT, and everybody throughout the enterprise.
Paving the trail towards chance
The PENN 1 workplace in New York Metropolis proudly stands for example of what the way forward for workplaces can seem like, and the mannequin we use as we develop different places of work world wide. The platform we constructed with PENN 1 is similar mannequin deployed at our places of work in ATL, Washington DC, Milan, London, Paris, and shortly to be Austin. What’s most enjoyable, is the benefit with which we may also help our clients obtain related outcomes.
With Cisco Areas, every little thing turns into a sensor. For the primary time, we’ve digitized actual property with the information units from current Cisco know-how that enable us to optimize house like by no means earlier than. This units the stage for wayfinding, asset monitoring, utilization, and extra. With Cisco networking in place, there’s highly effective knowledge we may also help you leverage. You probably have Cisco networking and collaboration gadgets, that set expands. The pliability permits us to satisfy our clients the place they’re and layer on prime of what they have already got.
Our workplaces give folks a purpose to return to the workplace, enabling higher collaboration all over the place. We’ve already confirmed that we are able to do our particular person work from wherever. However we’ve amplified the expertise with know-how as an asset that may present insights to not solely IT, however different influencers and patrons within the market whether or not it’s actual property or the top of retail operations.
We’re altering the conversations we are able to have with our clients round what’s potential and shaping the way forward for sensible constructing know-how with the facility of unified knowledge.
To be taught extra, try this videolearn the PENN 1 case research, and discover Cisco Areas
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