Siemon, a leading global network infrastructure specialist, is celebrating the success of its latest partnership event with Cisco which recently took place at the prestigious Eko Hotels and Suites complex in Lagos, Nigeria. IT professionals, consultants and architects from across the region gathered at the joint ‘Smart Cities – Connected Real Estate’ seminar to hear about how the next generation of real estate and building services technology is turning workplaces into environments that are personalised, efficient, functional and profitable.
Referred to as the Giant of Africa, Nigeria is set to be the first country in the continent with an economy larger than $1tn and it has also been projected by the United States National Intelligence Council (NIC) to be among the handful of countries that could determine global economic trends by 2030. Its growing commercial real estate sector is filled with opportunities and market trends are driving the need for building transformation.
The challenge lies in staying ahead of these market opportunities. Many properties have fallen behind on innovation and now must catch up to support new office requirements, lifestyles and user demands. Building services and utilities must add value to attract new tenants and buyers and maintain loyalty. Similarly, employees must have access to information and tools that improve responsiveness, accountability and productivity, while building performance must be improved to reach profitability goals and to comply with increasingly stringent energy management requirements.
At Smart Cities – Connected Real Estate, Cisco network engineers, Kacey Udumukwu and Funmi Coker, explained the company’s Managed Hospitality and Asset Management offerings. Meanwhile, Siemon’s business account manager for West Africa, Olajide Olagbenro, took the opportunity to highlight how Siemon’s innovative solutions are at the forefront of the move towards intelligent buildings and will allow enterprises to maximise the potential of the Internet of things (IoT).
Olagbenro focused on the benefits of the company’s pioneering ConvergeIT solution – a unified intelligent building cabling solution that utilises advanced copper and optical fibre cabling technology to create a structured cabling system that converges IP based building services on a single unified physical infrastructure. ConvergeIT creates a working environment that improves productivity by up to 18%, lowers energy usage by 50% and, by having all IP applications running over one low voltage RJ-45 platform, offers significant capital and operational expenditure savings, including up to 75% savings offered by deploying power over Ethernet (PoE) versus traditional AC power runs.
Commenting on the success of the event, Olagbenro said, ‘More devices than ever are now converging the physical infrastructure, providing the means to exchange information between integrated building systems. Structured cabling is critical to building strong IT infrastructures and it forms the foundation of the IP based networks that are now vital to the success of any business. All of our products are 100% compatible with Cisco’s equipment and by working together we are able to provide design services and tailored solutions that optimise the infrastructure to best support long-term networking requirements. Smart Cities – Connected Real Estate was a great way to communicate this to industry leaders and we will be hosting similar events in the future.’
