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SPOTLIGHT: INNOVATION

Wearable Technologies and the Impact on
Corporate and Commercial Real Estate

Chip Pieper all of these devices will play some role in technology designed to
Corporate Development optimize building performance and management.
CFI
One important and relevant fact is platform interoperability.
In late 2014, ABI Research forecasted 90 million wearable devic- If wearables are going to be, as Deloitte suggests, even more
es would ship worldwide by the end of the year. By early 2015,
it was clear that wearables didn’t achieve the rate of adoption germane to the enterprise, the industry is going to have to stan-
as predicted by research pundits. “We’ve seen wearables beta dardize on open protocols. Device interoperability will have to be
tested across industries, the design pattern; otherwise, we’ll end up simply adding to the
however, we haven’t multi-headed monster of a protocol that currently exists in the
heard of any production building sector, BACnet.
rollouts as of yet,” says
Chris Murphy, Editor at Yet, if we can count on Moore’s Law (computing power doubles
InformationWeek. every 18 months), the rate of iteration surrounding wearables will
happen at breakneck speeds. As processing power becomes faster
It appears the timeline and smaller, the direct relationship to business applicability and
will be largely impacted by value to this industry’s needs will be hard to deny.
Apple’s introduction of the
Apple Watch this spring. For purpose of brevity, I’m going to focus on one specific wear-
About 35 million people able and its potential impact on this industry’s use of extensible
reportedly want to buy technology, augmented reality smart glasses. As of today, the
an Apple Watch within a glasses themselves are a bit outsized. Then again, the advance-
year of its release, accord- ments not only of the device’s hardware capabilities, but the
ing to Business Insider. software as well, make smart glasses the ideal candidate to drive
Nevertheless, it will be first adoption.
interesting to see if Apple
has the ability to excite the Take for example Atheer Labs. Atheer created impressive 3D
commercial real estate sector’s appetite for wearable adoption compatible smart glasses that, in combination with the com-
through its market moving power. pany’s Atheer AiR OS, enable any Android application to be

Regardless, by 2020 IDC estimates in excess of a seven trillion
dollar market for the Internet of Things (IoT). Furthermore, within
Deloitte’s 2014 Technology Trends report, the firm clearly predicts
the greatest opportunity for growth will be in the enterprise. This
is both encouraging and even exciting.

However, with all of the current confusion in the building
efficiency industry surrounding technology solutions that
promise BIG energy, operations, maintenance, and equipment
savings, what influence can we really expect from wearables?
Based on numerous interviews, I think it will be significant and
transformative.

When we evaluate the various types of wearables that have
the greatest potential of impacting the building efficiency in-
dustry, will they be device centric? In other words, smart glasses
only? Or, will the next generation of computing that impacts
the building efficiency industry consist of smart watches, smart
clothing, smart pods, smart glasses, smart contacts, smart rings,
smart everything that can be worn and connected? Most likely,

36 Realcomm