Autodesk is downscaling its physical presence in San Francisco and Marin County, another sign of how some large Bay Area employers are reconfiguring their plans for the workplace in the pandemic.

Autodesk recently decided to consolidate some of the office space it occupies around its San Rafael headquarters and in San Francisco, according to a spokesperson. The software developer is exiting two locations — 3900 Civic Center Drive in north San Rafael and at 300 Mission St. in San Francisco — and consolidating employees into surrounding buildings.

“Rather than a departure, these two closures represent a reallocation of Autodesk’s investment in the San Francisco market,” wrote Stacy Doyle in an email. “We remain committed to our presence in the Bay Area.”

Company hiring during the pandemic has increased because of company growth and turnover, said to be below industry average, Doyle wrote. But the company has accelerated its “flexible workplace” program in recent months, working from quarterly input from workers.

“Based on insight gained via direct employee surveying, there is a growing preference to carry out individual work remotely, and conduct team meetings or collaboration-based work in offices,” Doyle wrote. That preference have been over half on some of those polls.

Autodesk announced the opening of the 117,000-square-foot office at 300 Mission last year, and the lease for the nearly 47,000-square-foot 3900 Civic Center building commenced at the beginning of 2020, according to San Francisco Business Times and North Bay Business Journal reporting.

According to its latest annual report, the company’s San Rafael facilities included about 162,000 square feet under leases with expiration dates ranging from December 2021 to December 2024, and its San Francisco facilities consisted of around 284,000 square feet of leases with expiring December 2022 to June 2026 Corporate real estate totaled 2.1 million square feet in 100 US and global locations.

In its fiscal third-quarter report, released in early December, the company said it expected to take a roughly $180 million impairment charge for the adjustments to its real estate because of the pandemic.

While larger employers in the Bay Area and Marin generally are being more cautious about their plans to reoccupy their offices, a number of smaller firms have been getting back together in their corporate spaces, according to Whitney Strotz, who overseas commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield’s San Rafael location.

“This recent spike in omicron seems to be putting things on hold in the short term, as we go through a relatively steep spike in cases,” Strotz said about large companies’ plans to expand their local real estate. But rather than nixing those goals, those employers tend to be slow-rolling their site searches, he said.

One trend in those site searches that has been gaining momentum in the pandemic is the shift from central offices in urban areas to a hub-and-spoke model, with a smaller central office there plus even smaller satellite locations in surrounding suburbs closer to the employees ‘ homes, according to Strotz.

He’s currently working with a handful of San Francisco firms that are looking for multiple locations of about 4,000-5,000 square feet in Bay Area suburbs.

“Sales organizations have seen success with this model for a long time,” Strotz said. That arrangement typically includes a regional office staffed with a management, human resources and operational support, then small offices in surrounding markets. “What’s different now is we are seeing other kings of organizations looking for similar space.”

Haden Ongaro, who leads Newmark’s North Bay commercial real estate brokerage team from San Rafael, said the rebound of rents and occupancy rates in higher-class office space in Silicon Valley, San Francisco “viewspace” (with window views above surrounding buildings) and southern Marin prime complexes are signs of the market for such space is recovering.

“We are seeing a flight to quality in the Bay Area,” Ongaro said. “Buildings in southern Marin have done well and maintained high lease rates and low vacancy — in some cases below 5% available (to lease).”

One company that gave up sizable Marin County office space earlier in the pandemic was jobs online marketplace Glassdoor, which moved its headquarters to a San Francisco high-rise as part of a Bay Area consolidation. But the company’s 40,000-square-foot former head office at 160 Shoreline Parkway in Mill Valley is in late-stage negotiations with three undisclosed companies in various industries to occupy the space, according to Ongaro, who is part of the team brokering the deals. And one of those companies also is interested in adding another 15,000 square feet in an adjoining building.

Yet the 3900 Civic Center space Autodesk is moving out of may have a tougher time on the market, according to Strotz.

“Larger blocks of space have not seen as much action since COVID,” Strotz said. “That’s a soft spot in the market. Medium- and smaller-(sized) suites have seen the most action in the last 24 months. I’m hopeful that as we move from the pandemic to the endemic stage soon, we will see larger blocks get more interest again.”

Jeff Quackenbush covers wine, construction and real estate. Before the Business Journal, he wrote for Bay City News Service in San Francisco. He has a degree from Walla Walla University. Reach him at jquackenbush@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4256.

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SAN FRANCISCO – (BUSINESS WIRE) – Sept. November 2021–

ForgeRock ® (NYSE: FORG), a global leader in digital identity, today announced new features for the ForgeRock Identity Cloud designed to help organizations overcome the barriers posed by passwords when moving to the cloud with pass-through authentication and authentication Overcoming just-in-time migration.

These new features come at a time when many companies are at a crossroads on their digital transformation journey. Teams need to evaluate the best approach to authentication that will maximize security while ensuring a seamless user experience. For many companies, managing sensitive passwords locally while moving other operations to the cloud is a major challenge.

“Our customers tell us that they want to say goodbye to passwords and become passwordless. But moving to the cloud often means adding more passwords or forcing password resets, which is a bad experience for users, ”said Peter Barker, chief product officer at ForgeRock. “With our new pass-through authentication and just-in-time migration capabilities, ForgeRock Identity Cloud enables companies to move to the cloud without having to manage even more passwords and inconvenience to customers that can undermine brand loyalty. “

This is what the new functions offer:

• Pass-Through Authentication (PTA): Adding more passwords in the cloud is cumbersome and expensive. To avoid this, PTA enables customers who are ready to move to the cloud and want to keep their passwords locally to use existing user IDs and passwords by authenticating against any identity store including Active Directory, LDAP, SQL or even flat files. This innovative approach also simplifies implementation and reduces the associated IT costs.

• Just-in-time migration: When customers are asked to reset their passwords, cloud migration projects are often blocked because companies fear customers will be leaving their service. ForgeRock’s new just-in-time migration feature removes this hurdle by enabling companies to migrate to the ForgeRock Identity Cloud without forcing their customers to change their passwords. Organizations can also gradually migrate users by department, location, or other factors to enable a step-by-step approach to the cloud, reducing unnecessary risk during the migration. This incremental approach also offers the flexibility to store the passwords locally for companies with stricter regulatory or other compliance requirements.

ForgeRock Identity Cloud is the only SaaS-based identity platform specifically designed for businesses. Its unique IAM capabilities include patented data isolation technology that separates any company’s identity data to provide superior cloud security. ForgeRock Identity Cloud also doesn’t offer surprising pricing to provide simple and flexible subscriptions with predictable pricing that avoid overage fees.

These new features are available immediately to ForgeRock Identity Cloud customers. For more information, please visit www.ForgeRock.com.

About ForgeRock

ForgeRock ®, (NYSE: FORG) is a global leader in the field of digital identity, providing modern and comprehensive identity and access management solutions for consumers, employees and other things to access the connected world easily and securely. With ForgeRock, more than 1300 global customer organizations orchestrate, manage and secure the entire lifecycle of identities from dynamic access controls, governance, APIs and the storage of relevant data – usable in any cloud or hybrid environment. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California with offices around the world. For more information and free downloads, visit www.forgerock.com or follow ForgeRock on social media: Facebook ForgeRock | Twitter @ForgeRock | LinkedIn ForgeRock.

View source version on businesswire.com: https: //www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211109005533/en/

CONTACT: Stacey Hurwitz

ForgeRock

Stacey.Hurwitz@forgerock.com

OR

Edelman on behalf of ForgeRock

Evgenia Sinopidou

Evgenia.Sinopidou@edelman.com

KEYWORD: UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA CALIFORNIA

INDUSTRY KEYWORD: DATA MANAGEMENT SECURITY TECHNOLOGY MOBILE / WIRELESS SOFTWARE NETWORKS INTERNET

SOURCE: ForgeRock

Copyright Business Wire 2021.

PUB: 11/9/2021 7:55 a.m. / DISC: 11/9/2021 7:56 a.m.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211109005533/en

Copyright Business Wire 2021.

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By Philip Ruth –

Hybrids just keep getting better, and they’re no longer just the goofy-looking hatchbacks they once were. The latest Camry Hybrid was a revelation of quick acceleration and enthusiastic handling, and the two competing sedans we’re examining this week – the hybrid versions of the Honda Accord and Hyundai Sonata – are impressive in their own way.

These Honda and Hyundai hybrids are the top of their line, and they’re priced within a mosquito apart. On the base models, the Sonata Hybrid (uniquely named Blue) is $ 1,180 higher than the Accord Hybrid, while Honda’s top touring trim is $ 1,140 more expensive than the Hyundai’s limited appearance.

Obviously, when planning these models, these companies kept a close eye on each other, not just price. The total EPA mileage is roughly the same, with the Honda’s 48 mpg beating the Hyundai by one. A bigger difference is the additional 20 horsepower that Honda gets from its 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine, even though they have the same number of liters.

Styling probably shows the biggest difference between them. The Honda’s fastback silhouette appeared to be eye-catching on its 2018 debut, and it still looks dramatic. The Hyundai’s design is more recent and a clear break with the sonatas of the past. Its sharp-edged contours are like no other brand and give an idea of ​​the exciting Ioniq 5, the electric SUV coming this fall.

They also differ in their driving behavior. Honda uses a continuously variable transmission (CVT), and it’s a decent version of that technology that, for some brands, can create a balloon effect when accelerating, where the engine appears to be spinning faster than the car is moving. The hills of San Francisco enhance that feeling, which is usually accompanied by an uncultivated roar from under the hood. but not so much with the powertrain of this Accord Hybrid. For the most part, it felt almost as crisp as a gearbox.

The Hyundai’s thrust delivery was more satisfactory because it actually works with gears, six of them in total, rather than a large flexible belt. It goes a long way in making the Sonata Hybrid feel like a traditional gasoline car, and it minimizes the electrical on and off delay that is part of the hybrid experience.

Both drive well, with a little more sportiness that color the behavior of the Honda. The Accord Hybrid’s steering is a bit sharper and the handling of bumps and curves is a bit more sophisticated. The Sonata Hybrid lacks that little extra handling flair, but it’s still easy to turn, especially given its medium-sized dimensions.

Inside, Honda and Hyundai are very accommodating, like large versions of themselves. The front doors open wide and the Hyundai felt lighter and airier than Honda, probably in part because of the light gray trim of the former as opposed to the all-black setup of the latter , the only offer of touring.

These two efficient mid-range models should be on every hybrid buyer’s list. It’s a tossup because everyone has their own focus on technology and design.

Philip Ruth is a Castro-based automotive photojournalist and consultant with an automotive staging service.

Published on August 12, 2021

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