Robert Entin0:04
I oversee all technical operations within Vornado, which is combination of all the information needs as well as the infrastructure and network needs. We focus on we've been a fairly early adopter and embrace of technology over the years, believing that it's both helpful to run the business better as well as the operations from the building's perspective, provide better amenities to the tenants and a more attractive product. A lot of the newer technologies relate more to what's going on inside the building, and the need to address tenants' needs from an operational point of view is pushing us a little bit more towards the operational side. So we're working on upgrading all of our security systems, we're doing facial recognition at turnstiles today, which is a very big plus for tenants. We're spending a lot of money on the building networks. This wave of technological investments is bigger than anyone in the past, and if you read the figures and you hear bandied about, five billion in capital put into prop tech over the last few years, so certainly it's bigger. I think the audience is more ready for it, so owners, developers, institutional owners are all more focused on what they can get out of this round, whereas I would say in the past, perhaps 2000 and 2005, you had two other ways. Where was certainly in 2000, there were a lot of non-believers. I think today, at least everybody says wait, we really need to watch out because there are some of the things that are coming that are going to dramatically change the way we operate buildings and provide a better environment for our antennas. At Vornado, we spent a lot of time on that sort of thinking, because we see a ton of money being poured into the industry, and with any wave of tech investments, obviously a lot doesn't stick, so that's normal. But the question in real estate is why are the numbers higher in terms of the failures and things that won't stick or not? The vendors have to have a better commitment to openness in the real estate prop tech industry. There have been handfuls of dominant vendors in the space over the years. They haven't had the need to be open in the past. Today, with all of the fledgling startups around them who need access to the data that are in their systems, there's a better need to be open. So I think that's one of the obstacles. I think in general with platforms, it's best if driven by us, the owner users, to state to the vendors in this space, openness is a requirement. So I think if we, as an industry, can really continue to push the democratization of data and open this to that data, I think that would take away one of the really big friction points that I see is troublesome.
