Cisco principal discusses benefits of IT connections.

With fully integrated office buildings being the key to attracting today's top corporate tenants, creating environments that combine real estate and IT solutions has become increasingly important, said Carl Gambello, principal of real estate and construction practice management with Cisco Systems and the featured speaker at a recent Real Estate Technology Forum meeting.

Speaking to a group of leading real estate and technology professionals, Gambello noted that Cisco's Connected Real Estate is the technology foundation that facilitates the convergence of real estate solutions and IT solutions.

"Much of a building's life cycle cost is lost due to redundant information and out dated processes that could be avoided by improved collaboration and data management," he said.

Gambello addressed some of the reasons why convergence is so important to a building's efficiency: it leverages investments and creates a foundation for growth; it is less expensive to maintain, grow and manage; it creates a foundation for new productivity tools and enables applications.

Gambello went on to explain that end users want high speed internet access, mobility, video surveillance, wireless, on-site data centers, data storage and network security. Integrated technology enables the "workplace of tomorrow," as it delivers an open standards Internet Protocol based network for which the temperature control, energy management, lighting control and eventually fire safety networks can traverse, thus eliminating redundant networks and the expenses associated with them. Gambello described how these services can be integrated and benefit the user.

Jonathan C. Rudes, co-chair of the Real Estate Technology Forum and president of Delphi Real Estate Advisors LLC, said: "In today's increasingly collaborative and mobile environment the opportunity to program the workspace is an enormous productivity enhancement. Imagine the ability to instantaneously program the desktop. It could include a person's private extension, content, bandwidth on demand and even personalized items. With Cisco's Connected Real Estate the possibilities are endless. It literally ties it all together."