WORKING FOR CHANGE
MIDDLEWARE
WORKING FOR CHANGE
Like universities , who are coming to realise that they are not accommodation specialists and would rather hand off to third party expertise , Liversidge believes the corporate world is likely to see a revolution in office space . “ Companies don ’ t want to be carrying the cost of large spaces in city centres or in major hubs at high cost that is not fully utilised . They ’ re going to want to hand that over to other people whose specialisms are in real estate as a service and have more fluidity in what space they need and when they use it .
“ We ’ re heading into a generation of more freelance contract work , where people will come together in teams on a fluid , organic , time-specific basis . You won ’ t be contracted to a company so much as contracted in for a particular activity or project within a company . And that company itself may only exist for a certain reason for a short period of time . People are going to say ‘ I want the ability to step out of my personal space and go to a dedicated workspace which is set up for that and has the facilities and amenities for that . And from a wellness and mental wellbeing perspective , it should give people that ability to mix face to face rather than solely via a screen .
“ So you ’ ve got three things in a state of flux that are going to be fluid in the immediate future . The challenge for us , at TSH , is to bring them together harmoniously , each part clearly defined , and as a profitable business . Technology will play a critical role in achieving this .
If you want to do things differently you have to overcome the constraints of conventional industry technology engineering . The Student Hotel has been pushing to break free of the “ standards , systems and platforms ” that “ just don ’ t exist to support our desired fluidity ”.
MIDDLEWARE
“ We ’ re on our transformation journey , and we ’ ve made some bets with innovators and early leaders who are bringing smart , dynamic tooling to the table to be a technology leader , breaking out of the conventional architecture and systems that just can ’ t cope with hybrid space use and operational fluidity that we believe are the basis of future business profitability and growth .”
Middleware , Liversidge argues , is the key . “ Middleware is a critical path for the industry because so many of these systems are linear and single use , but we ’ re trying to dimension our spaces to be multi-use . You need a logic layer that can connect those individual systems and allow you to
203 technologymagazine . com