While the idealized “smart building” may still be a few years away, Kastle Systems is delivering the future today with the KastlePresence smart office platform. Keying in on three main areas of impact—human productivity, energy monitoring and security reach—KastlePresence uses the latest Internet of Things (IoT) innovations to give you and your tenants hands-free capabilities, location-based services, personalized security and occupancy data that can help make your offices happier, safer and more efficient, according to Kastle Director of Product Marketing Nikhil Shenoy.

Incorporating Bluetooth across beacons, door readers and tenants’ mobile devices on top of a traditional access control system, KastlePresence anonymously collects occupancy data and statistics. But Nikhil says the true value comes from what you do with that data. Not only can these affect decisions about energy consumption and security, but they can also give occupancy or usage information regarding certain amenities (like huddle spots and gyms). This information can be stored and analyzed in the cloud, then used to make a building more profitable for managers and more efficient for tenants as they can react to real-time insights and trends.

“If you save five minutes every day over the course of a normal year,” Shenoy tells Bisnow, "that adds up to two and a half days of added productivity. And, according to the McKinsey Global Institute, office buildings alone have potential savings of $150B by implementing IoT technologies. Tenants can also use KastlePresence for space utilization. If they realize they only use 80% of their space, they may be able to save money and drive efficiencies by reconfiguring or reducing their space. The building, then, is able to lease out more of their space to more tenants.”

And for anyone who is concerned with the scope of it all, Nikhil says Kastle “has a strong privacy policy in place and we absolutely live by that policy, so we don’t disclose personally identifiable information to anyone beyond what’s already disclosed in today’s access control systems. So, if you enter a secured space today with your keycard, we’ll know whose credential was used—KastlePresence follows the same basic principles.”

Nikhil says that the company is currently focusing on commercial real estate—where it has deep expertise—but Kastle plans to bring the system everywhere, even to properties with slightly different dynamics, like multifamily buildings and college campuses.

As for the future of the Internet of Things, Nikhil thinks we’re well down the path, marveling at the automation of the more mundane aspects of life, including depositing a check, hailing a cab and controlling a thermostat, to name a few. But one day, he says, we may reach the point where agriculture, power grids and other macro parts of our lives are part of the Internet of Things—“things that you don’t really think about today, but you’ll think about even less so in the future, will have a tremendous impact on how we live.”

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