Real Estate Thought Leadership Blog

Corporate Real Estate Trends for Dynamic Technology Companies

This week T3 Advisors organized and moderated a sold-out panel for CoreNet titled, “How Corporate Real Estate Evolves with Rapid Tech Company Growth.”  With the economy still struggling to pull out of recession and unemployment a major focus for presidential primary debates, it’s no wonder we had over 100 corporate real estate players come hear about the 20 and 30% annual growth tech companies are seeing, and how their real estate needs are being addressed.

Panelists included:

• Julia Regan, Senior Manager of Facilities at EnerNOC
• Carol Leipner – Srebnick, Director, Real Estate Advanced Planning at Oracle
• Michael Donahue, VP and General Counsel of LogMeIn
• Roy Hirshland, Moderator - CEO and President of T3 Advisors

EnerNOC, LogMeIn and Oracle are all technology companies facing rapid growth; however the impacts, opportunities, and challenges are staggeringly different and shed light on the various challenges our clients face. Not to mention the panel was a ton of fun….

On the Role of CRE

• “I have a degree in elementary education. Who would have thought it was such a good primer for corporate real estate!” – Carol of Oracle, joking about how she got into Corporate Real Estate
• “I see myself as a change manager.” – Julia of EnerNOC
• “I sit next to and work closely with our CFO and it was natural for me to manage real estate.” – Michael of LogMeIn, who also serves as the companies General Counsel and Vice President

On Growth:

• LogMeIn and EnerNOC are seeing headcount (currently 500-600 total) grow annually by 20% largely from organic growth and few acquisitions (LogMeIn has done 2 total); Oracle did 9 acquisitions and 2010 and another 9 in 2011, they see much of their growth coming from international expansions, for example 20% of their employees are in India.
• Location comes 2^nd for real estate growth at Oracle, for them it’s more about knowing what talent and skills they need for growth and where they can find that.

On Technology and IT

• “IT is leading the need for flexibility in the workplace.” – Carol of Oracle speaking about how changing technology is driving the need to have constantly evolving workspaces to accommodate employee ability to plug in anywhere, anytime.
• “We’ve virtualized all our data centers so we can focus our space to employee needs.” – Julia of EnerNOC speaking on how they removed IT infrastructure needs from traditional employee and office needs.

On the Alternative Workplace Movement

• “It’s about hiring the RIGHT PEOPLE, who can focus and get the job done.” – Michael of LogMeIn on how to address the concerns of more collaboration leading to more distraction
• “We aim to find a balance between disruption and productivity.” – Julia of EnerNOC

 See more on the panel by downloading the presentation slides.