2025 Smart Building Trends: How Tech Innovations Are Shaping the Future of Workspaces
As businesses continue to encourage employees back into the office, 2025 is shaping up to be the year where smart building technologies explode. For building owners and operators, now is the time to assess their existing in-building IT and OT technologies while also exploring new innovations that have recently come to market.
Let’s look at five trends that are expected to make a major splash as employees make their way back in either in a permanent or hybrid work setting.
1. Cloud-native Management and Control
Many existing smart building systems and solutions are currently controlled using on-premises servers. Expect that in 2025, these on-premises systems will be phased out in favor of cloud-managed solutions. The benefits are numerous and include:
- Automated management and IoT/sensor updates
- Ease of remote management
- Improved security and access control
- Centralized data storage for improved analysis and machine learning
The advantages of cloud-managed systems in 2025 are hard to ignore and often lead to numerous efficiencies that lead to ongoing operational savings.
2. Edge Computing
There are situations in which connecting to far-off cloud servers does not provide the necessary reliability, speed, or latency required for certain smart building applications. Examples include:
- Surveillance cameras
- Energy management and monitoring
- Smart elevators/escalators
By processing data at the edge computing platforms (closer to where it’s generated), smart buildings can achieve lower latency, faster real-time operation times, and reduced cloud connectivity dependency.
3. AI-driven BMS
Most modern buildings are equipped with advanced Building Management Systems (BMS) that control and manage energy consumption and building system maintenance. Many of these existing systems can now take advantage of advanced AI and machine learning to streamline many existing manual processes with predictive maintenance and energy optimization analytics. Furthermore, automation can be enabled to enhance system maintenance and real-time decision making without the aid of humans. This leads to reduced operational costs and increased system performance while elongating your original BMS investment.
4. Smart Building as a Service (SBaaS)
Using a subscription model much like other popular applications such as Salesforce and Microsoft 365, Smart Building as a Service (SBaaS) is becoming an increasingly popular trend. SBaaS providers offer numerous smart building technologies on a subscription basis, making high-tech solutions more accessible without large initial investments or high demands for in-house professionals to manage them. Building owners and operators find that outsourcing these complicated services delivers improved results and scalability. This is especially useful for building owners who operate several buildings across wide geographical areas.
5. Augmented Reality (AR)
One of the more futuristic advancements within smart buildings that is gaining particular interest is the deployment and use of augmented reality to assist facilities staff. AR headsets or glasses are now being used to assist maintenance workers with real-time building navigation and to provide them with interactive guides or schematics overlaid on their field of view, making maintenance of complex equipment more efficient and less error-prone.
Keeping Buildings Modern and Occupant-ready
The trends shaping smart building technologies starting in 2025 are not just about efficiency or cost-saving; they’re about transforming how our occupants and staff interact with them. From cloud-native systems to AI-driven management, edge computing, and beyond, tremendous benefits exist. It all boils down to what you and your occupants value the most that will make the biggest difference.
