• The coronavirus crisis has proved that companies can remain productive over Zoom. 
• Remote work will become more common than ever, which will mean fewer people head to the office. 
• Office designs will change to be centered around collaborative work, and there could be a revival of the suburban office. 
• To read more stories on the future of the office, click here.

Coronavirus has changed the office forever.

The dense, urban, open-floor plan office has been the defining feature of offices over the last 20 years, with tightly packed flexible-office and coworking locations from companies like WeWork the biggest exemplars of the trend. A recent report by JLL found that up to 70% of all office spaces in the first quarter of 2020 were mostly or partially open floor offices. 

These sorts of offices are nightmares for the transmission of a virus that feeds on density, and they may end up as artifacts of the pre-pandemic start of the 21st century. Remote work, rumored to be waiting in the wings to kill the traditional office since the invention of the fax machine, has finally had its day. 

CEOs, like James Gorman at Morgan Stanley and Jes Staley at Barclays, have questioned the need for their pre-virus office square footage. They've had success running their businesses totally remotely, so why not save a couple of bucks on one of their biggest costs.

But the office won't die altogether. Instead, as the workplace has countless times before, it will evolve.

The evolution will begin with the short-term solutions that will make offices safe before a coronavirus vaccine. These changes will act like a bridge to the future of the workplace: some of these short-term changes will stick and some will eventually look as quaint as this photo of a masked-typist clacking away on a typewriter during the Spanish Influenza epidemic. 

The long-term evolution of the office will be decided in the coming months and years, as companies rethink their business plans to be flexible and resilient to retain productivity in a crisis.

While the loss of life and psychological pain of the pandemic, and the economic crisis following in its wake, are staggering, businesses are seeing it as an opportunity to make foundational changes to how and where they operate.

The choices that companies make now will decide what the office looks like in five years.  

Read more: The coronavirus is a 'nuclear bomb' for companies like WeWork. 10 real-estate insiders lay out the future of flex-office, and how employers are preparing now.

Remote work is here to stay

We're in the midst of the largest work-from-home experiment ever, which will likely be the beginning of a "paradigm shift" towards remote work. Executives and workers alike have seen first hand that business operations can continue online. 

A recent Colliers survey found that 4 in 5 employees hope to work remotely at least once a week after the coronavirus crisis ends. A Gartner survey this March found that 74% of 317 CFOs, half of which oversee the financials of companies with revenue above $1 billion, plan on shifting some employees to permanent remote work. 

Some organizations have already changed their remote work guidelines: Zillow's 5,000 employees will be able to work remotely at their discretion through the end of the year. Others, like Refinitiv, Tradeweb, Nationwide, and the aforementioned Barclays and Morgan Stanley, are signaling that their guidelines will also change. 

"We used to joke about meetings that could have been emails, but now we'll wonder why we can't just do them in our pajamas with our pets on video conference," Nancy Dubuc, Vice Media Group CEO, told Business Insider. "There's a balance of course because some work is actually more productive and better done in person, but it will never need to be 5 days a week, all day every day again."

When these companies begin to shift their business models to accommodate remote work, the office will change. They may cut back on individual workspaces and increase investment in collaborative spaces, turning the office into a cultural and training hub.

"This (more remote work) means adapting some of the office structure to help this way of working succeed, with even more video facilities and more flexible group spaces for brainstorming sessions," Luke Ellis, CEO of investment manager Man Group, told Business Insider. 

Most leaders aren't considering going fully remote. Instead, they're going to use office space differently, and could potentially even cut back on space. PR giant BCW Global's CEO Donna Imperato is considering taking less office space as more employees work remotely, for example.

"I'm not sure we'll go back to office seating," she said. "We won't need as much real estate because more people will start working from home. That's a cost saving, and they become more productive." 

Read more: The CEO of the third-biggest PR firm BCW lays out how the company will outperform its peers in a tough year

Arnold Levin, director of strategy for the southwest at leading architecture and design firm Gensler, told Business Insider about one health insurance client that had been looking to cut down on their 500,000 square foot office portfolio before the pandemic. Levin produced a plan that utilized desk-hoteling to cut the footprint down to 320,000 square feet, and presented it over a video chat in the midst of the lockdown. 

The CEO told Levin that their workforce had been so effective at working remotely that they actually would prefer to cut back on an all individual workspace in their offices. They're now planning to operate in one 80,000 square foot office building, using it for training, large meetings, and to entertain clients. 

Read more: What to expect when you're back in the office: 7 real-estate experts break down what the transition will look like, and why the workplace may never be the same

Why remote work won't kill the office completely

If every company were to shrink their footprint as drastically as Levin's client, the commercial office market would crumble. This is unlikely to happen for a couple of reasons. For one, if less people came into the office, but offices became less dense to make social distancing possible, companies might still need just as much office space. 

"We, like everyone else, have dreams of reducing our real estate footprint," MSCI CEO Henry Fernandez told Business Insider. However, that dream is constrained by the realities of social distancing.

"The flipside of that is whatever real estate you occupy, you will consume a lot more of it because we have to social distance," Fernandez said.

A whitepaper by Michael Colacino, president at office space company SquareFoot, walks through the reasons why he thinks that the reduction in office space likely won't approach the roughly 25% decrease that's estimated by some experts.

Executives, already most likely to work remotely before the pandemic, would have to give up their dedicated office space, which is usually much larger than a typical employees. Other employees would have to turn to hot-desks (desks that are on a first-come-first-serve basis) and shared workspaces instead of offices or assigned desks.

Hot-desking would lead to an almost-unsolvable coordination problem: how do you make repeatable schedules that prevent the office from getting too crowded while also making sure that the correct people are in the office for any in-person activities, like trainings or meetings? Hot-desking also requires a large amount of cleaning to prevent spread of the coronavirus.

Without workers going remote full-time, the office space won't be able to shrink much. Colacino's model predicts that space demand will shrink about 5%. Given the long length of leases and the high costs associated with breaking a lease or finding a subletter, this shrinkage will happen over a horizon of years, blunting the impact.

Read more: Major tenants are delaying big leases in as they re-think their office space needs for the post-coronavirus world

How do we make offices safe?

Before the advent of a coronavirus vaccine, the near-term return to the office will require lots of operational and technological changes to prevent spread of the virus. The psychological effects of the crisis, and the reality that global catastrophic events are likely to become more common as a result of climate change, means that these changes won't disappear once the virus becomes a distant memory.

"What is going to be the long-term imprint psychologically on any of us?" Levin from Gensler said. "We wake up in the morning, we hear about the virus and we hear about the death tolls. We go to bed, we hear about the death tolls."  

Offices may not feel safe even after a vaccine, and it will be up to companies to make employees feel safe. After 9/11, office buildings in major cities began to add turnstiles and security desks to prevent potential terrorist attacks, and surveillance increased in pretty much every public space. This sacrifice of privacy for security will happen in the office after coronavirus.

Surveillance in a pre-coronavirus office largely meant the watchful eye of a manager trying to see who is scrolling Instagram at their desk or watching a daytime baseball game in the corner of their computer monitor.

After coronavirus, surveillance will include everything from temperature checks at a building entrance to the mandatory installation of contract-tracing applications on an employee's smartphone, all of which are allowed under legal guidance offered by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Center for Disease Control, according to a Goodwin Procter legal analysis. 

In China, 80% of Class A office buildings are requiring temperature checks at the entrance to the building to prevent the spread of the virus, according to a JLL report. 

Artificial intelligence company Landing AI has developed demo software that uses video to flag inadequate social distancing in the workplace in real time. AI-enabled video surveillance and utilization monitoring sensors are likely to become much more common.  

The limiting factor for a lot of these changes is their cost, magnified by the economic tightening underway right now.  

"(The costs) add insult to injury within the environment we're operating in," Andrew Sucoff, chair of Goodwin Procter's Boston real estate practice.

Read more: Mandatory temperature-taking is largely seen as a critical way to return workers to offices. But some big NYC landlords are worried about its effectiveness.

The return of the suburban office

Some businesses are considering alternating desks or erecting temporary barriers in the short-term. In the long-term, companies are considering everything from erecting walled, private offices to moving to suburban office spaces. 

A forthcoming report by Dr. Victor Calanog, head of commercial real estate economics for Moody's Analytics REIS traces the last time the suburban office came into, and out of vogue.

In the 1980s, with crime at approaching record highs and federal and state aid to city budgets shrinking, there was a professional-class exodus from the city to the suburbs. Corporations followed suit on a slightly delayed time scale, given the length of typical office leases: from 1989 to 1997, suburban market inventory expanded 1.7 times faster than inventory in cities's central business districts. 

By 1997, suburban office vacancies were 1.8% lower than central business district vacancies, and by 1998, the Building Owners and Managers Association said that the suburban office will be the top real estate investment of the next five to ten years. 

That did not come to pass. City budgets increased, crime fell, and professional workers began to move back to the city. Simultaneously, internet technology and increasing office density lowered demand for office space. The city became the ideal location for office space once again. 

This cycle may repeat itself, with the pandemic replacing crime and budgetary constraints. After 9/11, Morgan Stanley moved employees to offices in Westchester County, New York a suburb outside Manhattan. Before the total coronavirus lockdown, Morgan Stanley moved traders back to the same office again. 

Why is this time different?

The death of the office has been foretold for a while now, but hasn't come to pass.  Dr. Calanog told Business Insider that people have been theorizing the death of the office since the arrivals of the fax machine and the internet.

Levin, from Gensler, told Business Insider that consultants thought the Great Recession would be the catalyst for the future of the office, where "everyone will be like Google." 

The mood at the time is best summed up by a Rahm Emmanuel catchphrase from 2009, by way of Macchiavelli and a pit stop with Naomi Klein: "Never let a crisis go to waste."

"People had short-lived memories," Levin said. "Some changed, but a vast majority went back to cramming as many people into a space as possible." 

This time is different, says Dr. Calanog, because of the international scope of the change and the duration of the shock, which still has no obvious end date. 

Levin said that, instead of focusing on tactical changes or the ideal model for the future office, he's asking clients deep questions about their goals and principles and the threats to their current business model. 

"The best thing is to avoid clever trends and quick fixes, and have organizations face this new reality," Levin said. 

Levin said the organizations that are using this time to realign their business model to be more adaptable will be the most successful going forward. Any changes they make to their office and workplace should flow from that realignment.

"I think organizations are going to see more of a connection with a need to change their business models and how the workplace connects to that for the first time."

SEE ALSO: What to expect when you're back in the office: 7 real-estate experts break down what the transition will look like, and why the workplace may never be the same

SEE ALSO: Mandatory temperature-taking is largely seen as a critical way to return workers to offices. But some big NYC landlords are worried about its effectiveness.

SEE ALSO: 'We should be prepared for a new normal': 3 real estate experts on how the coronavirus is transforming offices and accelerating the rise of industrial property

Join the conversation about this story »

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• Tesla's vehicles are and always have been crammed with great ideas.
• These range from touchscreen interfaces to innovative battery designs to staggering acceleration.
• I've driven or experienced every vehicle Tesla has ever sold or intends to sell in the future.
• Here are all my favorite features, ranked.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

In about two decades, Tesla has done what everyone in the auto industry thought was impossible: create an all-electric brand that could sell hundreds of thousands of vehicles.

Tesla could have done that in a boring or modest way, developing  the equivalent of an electric VW Beetle.

Instead, Tesla made fantastically compelling cars that are fast, look amazing, and are packed with features.

Here's a rundown of all my favorites, ranked from bottom to top:

FOLLOW US: On Facebook for more car and transportation content!

Tesla has been in business for 17 years. In that period of time, it's consistently captivated the world not just because it makes all-electric cars, but because those cars have always been packed with cool features.

"Easter eggs" — frivolous little extras that Tesla throws in whenever it does software updates. Owners enjoy finding them.

The Model X's falcon-wing doors. Dramatic, slightly impractical, and a nightmare to manufacture. But Tesla has the only SUV on the road with such an exotic feature.

Bioweapon Defense Mode uses a powerful filtration system to render the interior air quality of the Model X or Model S "hospital grade," according to Tesla.

The Model X's 5,000-pound towing capacity. Nobody ever talks about it, but the Model X can tow a goodly amount for an electric SUV. It's very competitive with gas-powered SUVs that tout their capabilities.

The large, central portrait touchscreen on the Model S and Model X. This mega-tablet interface was a revelation when Tesla first introduced it on the Model S in 2012, but it's now emulated throughout the auto industry. It's actually canted slightly toward the driver.

Aero Wheels on the Model 3. The proprietary design is standard on the vehicle, enhancing airflow, reducing drag, and improving range.

Ludicrous Mode. The acceleration feature — which followed Insane Mode, first rolled for the all-wheel-drive Model S — enables Teslas to cover the 0-60 mph sprint at supercar-like velocities.

Frunks! All Teslas currently on sale have front trunks, expanding their cargo capacities. Having no gas engine helps to free up space.

Trunks! Teslas are commendable cargo haulers because they're effectively boxes on top of battery packs, creating ample space for luggage, groceries, of gear.

Quiet. In operation, Teslas are notably quiet and smooth, thanks to the optimization of airflow, solid build quality, and mostly silent electric motors.

The Tesla smartphone app. I've actually tested a number of these from assorted manufacturers, but Tesla's is the only one that's truly useful. For the Model 3, it replaces the traditional key fob.

The glass roof of the Model 3. It creates a stunning silhouette and floods the cabin with natural light.

The space-age operators' platform in the cab of the Tesla Semi. This space — clearly anticipating a time when semi-trucks drive themselves — is the most futuristic thing Tesla has ever designed.

Roadsters in space. CEO Elon Musk's personal Tesla Roadster was launched atop the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in 2017, as a test payload. Piloted by "Starman," it set a new standard for automotive marketing.

Tesla's in-house audio system. Most luxury brands partner with a big-name audio company for premium sound systems, but Tesla developed its own — and it sounds absolutely fantastic.

Charge monitoring and mapping. Charging is among the most important things Tesla has to think about, so the company has made it a priority to track it in the vehicle and via the app, as well as to plot road-trip courses that use GPS navigation to permit island-hopping from charging location to charging location.

Navigate on Autopilot combines Tesla's GPS mapping system with Autopilot's ability to execute lane changes and freeway on- and off-ramping maneuvers.

The new Roadster's staggering performance specs. The all-new machine has a claimed 0-60 mph time of 1.9 seconds, making it the fastest production vehicle in the world.

The Model 3's consolidated vehicle-management system and central landscape touchscreen. Almost every aspect of the Model 3 is controlled here, and the traditional instrument cluster has been moved to the left side of the screen, and streamlined.

The radical design of the Cybertruck. In late 2019, Tesla had fallen into a design rut. The otherworldly, stainless-steel Cybertruck changed all that. Controversial to be sure, but also thrilling.

Read about the Cybertrucks' rad design.

Manufacturing simplicity. Electric cars are less complicated to build than gas-powered ones. Tesla has designed its factory in China to optimize this aspect of production, which could support and enviable profit margin for Tesla in the 20-30% range.

The white interior. It's an extra, but a very popular one. I was initially skeptical, but I'm now a fan. After all, it survived a 700-plus-mile family road trip!

Read about the road trip.

Over-the-air software updates. Just like smartphones, Teslas can be routinely upgraded while sitting in owners' driveways. This means that an older Tesla can acquire new features quite literally overnight.

The Supercharger network. Access to DC fast-charging used to be a lifetime perk for Tesla owners, but Tesla has begun to bill for the service. Still, it enables longer road trips and is completely integrated with each Tesla vehicle's systems.

Tesla's design philosophy. Head designer Franz von Holzhausen and Elon Musk argue that it doesn't cost anymore to make Teslas beautiful. But von Holzhausen has also exercised tasteful restraint, ensuring that Tesla's vehicles have a long market life.

Read about Franz's design influence.

Performance! Tesla vehicles have always combined electric virtuosity with industry-leading performance. Owners can usually expect to be driving one of the fastest cars on the road.

Battery design. Tesla has taken a complicated, multi-cell concept — thousands are wired together in packs — and perfected it, yielding impressive range and performance. The company also manufactures its own packs, in partnership with Panasonic.

The Model 3's minimalist driving experience. With the clean dashboard, you can focus on the road ahead. It's a blissful thing and my top Tesla feature.

The bottom line is that while plenty of other automakers put cool features in their cars, Teslas are crammed with ideas, ideas, and more ideas.

• Oracle's bid to become a bigger player in the cloud has become more aggressive in the COVID-19 crisis, highlighted by a new partnership with Zoom.
• The tech giant is up against stronger rivals led by Amazon, Microsoft and Google, but the need for more cloud capacity sparked by the sudden pivot to remote work has created opportunities for the Silicon Valley behemoth.
• Here are the 10 Oracle executives who are playing key roles in CEO Safra Catz and founder Larry Ellison bold cloud offensive.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Oracle has been through some jarring changes in the last seven months. 

The tech giant lost a well-regarded and experienced co-CEO when Mark Hurd died in October after taking leave for health reasons, leaving Safra Catz as the solo CEO. Now, like other major tech companies, Oracle is grappling with the impact of the coronavirus crisis.

But Oracle has been through tough times in its 43-year history. In fact, the Silicon Valley giant has been known to seize opportunities during rough spots. It's already seen some success during this crisis, too: Oracle just scored a big win when videoconferencing company Zoom — suddenly facing a surge in demand — chose to expand on Oracle Cloud, instead of other platforms like top cloud provider Amazon. Oracle is generally considered a smaller player in the cloud wars, behind giants Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Alibaba.

Yes, Oracle still has a long way to go to match its rivals' reach, but its strategy of expanding its capacity by building more data centers seems to be paying off, IDC President Crawford Del Prete told Business Insider.

That increased capacity and Oracle's "world class" applications are key in the cloud words, Del Prete said: "Oracle is one of the few companies able to deliver both at scale in order to compete."

While Catz and founder, executive chairman, and chief technology officer Larry Ellison the lead company, they're also relying on key top executives, including cloud veterans from rival Amazon, to advance Oracle's cloud strategy. 

Nearly all are white men, something Oracle has criticized for in the past: Over 30 members of Congress slammed the company late last year about the lack of diversity in its leadership team and on its board.

Meet the 10 top executives playing important roles in Oracle's cloud offensive:

SEE ALSO: Oracle is known for making bold M&A moves in a recession and it's sitting on a fresh $20 billion. Here are the 7 companies experts think it could acquire as the coronavirus crisis drives down valuations

SEE ALSO: Experts lay out five moves that Oracle founder Larry Ellison, one of tech's best tacticians, might take in a coronavirus-driven downturn

Don Johnson left Amazon to focus on Oracle's cloud infrastructure.

Title: Executive vice president, cloud infrastructure

Reports to: Larry Ellison

Johnson  played a key role in Amazon's dramatic expansion in the cloud before joining Oracle in 2014.

He was instrumental in setting up Oracle's cloud engineering development center in Seattle and in the tech giant's expanding data center footprint.  Johnson has also led another major Oracle initiative: forming a cloud partnership with Microsoft.

Oracle's chief corporate architect Edward Screven has been with the company since 1986.

Title: Chief corporate architect

Reports to: Larry Ellison

Screven is an Oracle veteran who helped lead the company through all of the major industry changes of the past 30 years.

He admits that cloud market-leader Amazon had a head start, but says that there are benefits to following it. 

"We definitely started after Amazon: The bad news is they have market share, the good news is we get to learn a lot," he told Business Insider in an interview in May 2019. "Mindshare, that may be their biggest asset. But there is no technology they have that is concerning to me at all."

As one of Oracle's top technologists, he's focused on making Oracle's cloud infrastructure more secure, with more sophisticated and efficient ways to manage data. 

"We have hundreds of thousands of customers that store their most important data in Oracle databases," Screven said. "We could do a far better job for them than any other cloud provider. We are doing a far better job for them."

Clay Magouyrk leads cloud infrastructure engineering and played a key role in forging Oracle's new alliance with Zoom.

Title: Executive vice president, cloud infrastructure engineering

Reports to: Don Johnson

Magouyrk is another veteran of Amazon Web Services who joined the Oracle team in Seattle in 2014. 

He was Oracle's point-man in forging its new partnership with Zoom, which was seen as a major victory for Oracle.

"They needed capacity," Magouyrk told Business Insider last month "They reached out to us and we were like, 'Awesome, we can work with you.' Within a day, we had their application up and running."

Magouyrk was a founding team member of Oracle's cloud engineering development center in Seattle, which is spearheading the company's cloud infrastructure efforts.

Ariel Kelman left Amazon Web Services to become Oracle's chief marketing officer.

Title: Chief Marketing Officer

Reports to: Safra Catz

One of the biggest hurdles for Oracle is the public perception that it's a minor player in the cloud. In other words, it's a marketing problem.

This is where Kelman comes in. Before Oracle brought him on board in January 2020, Kelman led rival Amazon's cloud marketing efforts, and served as a marketing executive at Salesforce for six years before that.

"Ariel is a super smart hire for Oracle," analyst Ray Wang of Constellation Research told Business Insider. "He brings the cred in the market and understands how to counter all of Amazon's tactics and long-term strategy. He has the ear of Larry and Safra and is making progress with some great hires on his team."

Juergen Lindner left SAP to lead Oracle's software-as-a-service marketing strategy.

Title: Senior vice president, software-as-a-service marketing

Reports to: Ariel Kelman, chief marketing officer

Lindner spent most of his career helping SAP outsell Oracle in the traditional business software market: both dominated teh market for software installed in private data centers. 

He switched sides and roles four years ago to support Oracle's bid to become a stronger player in cloud software, also referred to as software-as-a-service, where businesses access applications through cloud platforms and pay via a subscription, usually based on the number of users granted access. 

Lindner has said it became clear to him that Oracle had a better strategy for the cloud-software era.

"Oracle has architected a very sustainable cloud infrastructure and applications strategy," he told Business Insider last year.

Steve Daheb left Citrix to lead Oracle's cloud marketing strategy.

Title: Senior vice president, cloud go-to-market

Reports to: Ashley Hart, senior vice president, global marketing cloud platform and database

Daheb joined Oracle in 2015 after serving as the chief marketing officer of Citrix, a cloud pioneer that first let businesses set up computing networks on web-based platforms instead of on-premise data centers, leading to dramatic IT cost savings.

Daheb witnessed the unexpected rise of Amazon in cloud computing, which began in the early : 2000s when the online retail giant realized it could make some extra money by giving businesses access to its massive but underutilized computing infrastructure, hosted from its data centers.

"Amazon had spare computing resources to rent out," he told Business Insider last year. "It's like, 'Hey, man, I got an extra room in the house during the summer when it's not spike retail time. There's nobody in there, so why don't I put this thing on Airbnb and see if anybody wants it?'"

Amazon Web Services has led the industry ever since. 

Like others on the Oracle team, Daheb thinks the software giant's technology and track record of working with major players across industries will eventually propel it to the front of the cloud pack.

"There's a level of understanding we have and a level of empathy we have for enterprise users: We serve the major banks, we serve transportation, we serve healthcare," he said. "We brought this enterprise mentality to it."

Juan Loaiza, who has been with Oracle since 1988, is in charge of mission-critical database technologies.

Title: Executive vice president, mission-critical database technologies

Reports to: Larry Ellison

Loaiza is another Oracle veteran who has been with the company for more than 30 years and is currently focused on its bid to expand the reach of its flagship database product.

The tech giant's cloud-based automated data-management platform Autonomous Database uses machine learning to quickly repair and update itself.Loaiza has compared the status of this fairly new initiative to the development of the self-driving car:

"It took a long time to get to a point where we are now and say, 'The next step is a self-driving car,'" he told Business Insider last year. "It's got to be safe. It has to have seatbelts and airbags and a navigation system. All that stuff was necessary before you take it to the next stage." 

The database is ready for that next stage. 

Jason Williamson left Amazon to lead Oracle's outreach to startups.

Title: Vice president, Oracle for Startups

Reports to: Mamei Sun, Ellison's chief of staff

Startups have played an important role in the growth of cloud computing and Oracle has launched a big push to establish closer ties with these smaller companies, given that they could eventually become the biggest power players. 

Williamson has been the company's point-man in this effort, as he develops ways to make Oracle's products and services more accessible to startups.

Williamson is another veteran of Amazon Web Services where he led the cloud giant's private-equity team before joining Oracle in 2017.

Evan Goldberg cofounded NetSuite, which is now part of Oracle.

Title: Executive vice president, NetSuite

Reports to: Safra Catz

Goldberg is part of the elite club of Oracle alums who went on to launch successful enterprise-software companies. (Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is perhaps the best-known.)

Goldberg left a long career at Oracle in the late 1990s to launch NetSuite, a cloud-based provider of financial- and accounting-management services. He was the chief technology officer alongside CEO Zach Nelson, another Oracle alum, and Ellison was actually one of their early backers.

Oracle acquired the company in 2016 and it now has more than 18,000 customers. 

Steve Miranda has been with Oracle since 1992 and leads cloud-applications development.

Title: Executive vice president, applications product development

Reports to: Ellison

Miranda is an Oracle veteran in charge of different aspects of the company's cloud-software business, including product development and strategy.

This covers applications used for major business operations, like supply-chain management, human resources, and enterprise performance management.

Welcome to Wall Street Insider, where we take you behind the scenes of the finance team's biggest scoops and deep dives from the past week. 

If you aren't yet a subscriber to Wall Street Insider, you can sign up here.

For certain corners of Wall Street, dealmaking is happening faster than ever. While M&A activity has plunged, bankers primed to help companies navigate the financial fallout, especially restructuring and debt-raising specialists, have been crushed with demand.

Alex Morrell took a look at how top bankers — known for putting in long hours curating a white-glove experience for clients — are finding they can still provide service from afar. It turns out, when you take away the time spent at airports and restaurants, and when Zoom calls can be arranged in minutes, things can move at lightning speed. 

Read the full story here: 

'Stunning efficiency': How remote dealmaking could mean a permanent lifestyle change for some bankers

Meanwhile, it's been a tale of two approaches to job cuts in recent days. On Tuesday, Airbnb CEO and cofounder Brian Chesky emailed staff about sweeping layoffs that were impacting 1,900 people, highlighting where the company will focus in the future and what exit packages employees should expect. You can read the full email here. 

Over at WeWork, things have been rolling out gradually. Meghan Morris and Dakin Campbell wrote about a leaked WeWork document that revealed a huge reorg under way for people who manage its buildings. Here's how the new structure works — and the complex process for staff to save their jobs. Alex Nicoll and Meghan also reported that Flatiron School has slashed at least 100 jobs, building on their scoop last week that WeWork started making cuts in several key departments, with IT alone losing some 200 jobs. 

Keep reading for a preview of changes in store for Bloomberg terminals, a rundown of Blackstone's giant commercial real estate business, and a look at how PIMCO stocked up with $5.5 billion for private-credit strategies since the beginning of the year.

Have a safe and healthy weekend, 

Meredith 

Inside Blackstone's massive CRE business

Blackstone is the largest commercial real-estate investor in the world, with $160 billion in investor capital. Alex Nicoll chatted with Blackstone real estate's three heads of acquisition, and its head of debt origination, to learn more about their business. 

They spoke about some of their most interesting deals, and why Blackstone's global scale and thematic investing style is a huge advantage. 

Read the full story here: 

Meet the 4 dealmakers driving Blackstone's $325 billion commercial real estate portfolio. They walked us through how they're thinking about opportunities in the downturn.

A Facebook office deal is a key test 

The coronavirus crisis has thrown into question whether tenants will ever occupy office space the same way again as companies and workforces around the world grow accustomed to remote work.

Facebook has been in negotiations for months to lease over 700,000 square feet at the Farley Building on Manhattan's West Side. The rapid expansion of tech in recent years has propelled the city's office market, and Dan Geiger spoke with real-estate execs who laid out why Facebook's deal is a key barometer. 

Read the full story here:

A blockbuster Facebook office deal is a make-or-break moment for the future of commercial real estate. 3 leasing experts lay out the stakes.

Coming soon to a terminal near you

As remote work becomes a long-term reality, a technology staple of Wall Street is in store for a makeover. Mark Flatman, global head of core terminal at Bloomberg, told Dan DeFrancesco that the financial technology giant is considering ways to revamp its ubiquitous terminal.

One particular area of focus for Flatman and his team has been screen space, as many customers aren't working with the typical four-screen display. Another area that has gotten increased attention is mobile, where usage has jumped. 

Read the full story here: 

Bloomberg is eyeing big changes to its iconic terminals to make work-from-home easier. The exec leading its strategy laid out how he's rethinking screen space and mobile features.

A new pile of cash for private credit

Industry observers expect a surge in interest in specialized credit shops that have proven to be winners in distressed situations. And Bradley Saacks revealed how PIMCO has tapped into that demand, with sources saying that the fixed-income giant has raised $5.5 billion in private-credit strategies since the beginning of the year.

PIMCO's nearly $4 billion Tactical Opportunities fund lost roughly 15% in March, but was able to avoid forced selling, sources tell Business Insider, and even added to positions in the month. That fund alone has raised $250 million — and is just one of several private-credit funds that PIMCO has raised money for.

Read the full story here: 

PIMCO has raised $5.5 billion for private-credit funds despite a hellacious March — and is telling investors it's the best opportunity in a decade

A tax break for big companies with heavy debt

But some tax experts are concerned that the tax break is too indiscriminate: In addition to helping troubled companies, they say, boosting tax deductions on interest payments is going to give a lift to companies that aren't being hurt by the pandemic, or whose problems have nothing to do with the coronavirus. 

Read the full story here:

A $13 billion tax break tucked into the coronavirus stimulus plan will save some big companies tens of millions — even if they aren't ailing. Here's how it works and who could benefit.

On the move

Dakin Campbell reported that Goldman Sachs has hired the distressed-situations and bankruptcy expert Kurt Hoffman as a managing director in a business that handles one-off loans for clients. The move comes just as industries battered by the economic shutdown are in need of emergency financing. 

Investing and hedge funds

• SoftBank's brutal treatment of WeWork founder Adam Neumann shows that it has given up any hope for Silicon Valley and it's leaving a scorched landscape in its wake
• April hedge fund performance numbers are in — here's how big names like Third Point and Renaissance turned things around after a rough March
• WeWork pain is still hitting mom and pops' mutual funds as managers like Fidelity slash valuations further
• 'Quantamental' investing is suddenly a buzzword in the hedge fund world, and we talked to the CEO of a fintech that just nabbed $8 million to help power the approach
• Steve Cohen's former right-hand man is launching his own fund. Here's everything we know about Tom Conheeney's EmeraldRidge Advisors.
• A data 'super contango' makes oil the new data, not the other way around. Here's why.

Careers

• Deloitte is delaying many of its full-time hires and switched summer internships to a 2-week online intro course. Here's everything we know.
• Jobs for thousands of young consultants are being upended. From delaying start dates to cutting internships, here's what 8 top firms are doing.
• Investment manager TIAA is offering 75% of its US employees buyouts and some could get their full salaries for nearly 2 years

Real estate 

• The CEO of real estate heavy-hitter Eastdil explains the types of deals that are must-do right now — and warns that a 'de-retailing' trend is set to accelerate
• Inside the drama over control of the iconic Chrysler Building: A real-estate tycoon and a prestigious college are renegotiating a critical $150 million deal

Fintech and e-commerce

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How waste is dealt with on the world's largest cruise ship

Unlike most D.C. galas where the political powerhouses steal the spotlight, drag queens reigned supreme at this shindig.

The Members team ultimately fell 10-4 to the press team, despite valiant efforts from players such as 2020 presidential hopeful and team pitcher Kirsten Gillibrand.

Fans of the Disney animated movie celebrated its addition to the National Film Registry.

Several Hollywood A-listers gave a reading of select parts of the report in New York.

The former press secretary is reportedly writing a book about her tenure — adding to a growing list of White House advisers with stories to sell.

The reality TV star wrote that she and her husband, real estate developer Michael Darby, are "savoring every moment."

The rapper said she wanted to support women's and LGTBQ rights.

Despite the potential of, um, awkwardness among the diplomatic core and official Washington, elbows were ripe for rubbing at the French ambassador’s residence.

The presidential candidate and Washington governor wants Rapinoe in his administration — should he get elected.

Human rights advocates have urged artists not to perform in the country because of its dismal human rights record.

The reality star and her husband, Kanye West, tapped some high-ranking friends to help the rapper, who has been detained in Sweden.

The rapper has been a supporter of the Democratic presidential candidate, and says she wants to help "a movement of young people to transform this country."

You know about Beto O'Rourke on the guitar, of course, but what about Bernie Sanders's spoken-word album?

The tome will be written by CNN's East Wing correspondent, Kate Bennett.

Swift called on the White House to respond to her petition in support of the Equality Act, which would explicitly outlaw discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation.

The dinner was the second for the Trump administration.

“Clearly my sister’s paycheck is more important than the world her three adopted kids will inherit,” Curtis Ingraham wrote on Twitter.

The CBS Studios show will be based on the former FBI director's best-selling memoir.

The singer announced she will not participate in Fortune’s Most Powerful Women conference after learning the former homeland security secretary was a speaker.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren embraced her latest celebrity endorsements. "Looking forward to the day @chrissyteigen doesn't have to fight with the president of the United States on Twitter," she said.

During a somewhat combative episode, Megan McCain asked the president's son about the "pain" his family has caused.

From "The Irishman" to "Little Women," his list was mostly consistent with popular critical thinking.

Famous supporters flocked to social media as Sen. Bernie Sanders ended his presidential campaign.

"Becoming" will be the third Netflix documentary from Barack and Michelle Obama's Higher Ground Productions.

Review of "This America" by Jill Lepore and "The Heartland" by Kristin L. Hoganson

If you are just starting up your website, perhaps you are selling tangible items, or you have a hit single that you’ll be offering digital copies of, one of your pressing questions may be: “Which payment gateway should I use to accept payments from my customers?“. While there are pros and cons of using any […]

The post Benefits of Adding Multiple Payment Gateways to Your Website’s Checkout appeared first on Tips and Tricks HQ.

Discover the (sometimes surprising!) things you can no longer do on a cruise and cruise ship. How many of these did you know about? Got any to add that I missed? I look forward to you listening (or watching the video version: https://youtu.be/zas6F4wMD0Q )

Saga Cruises launched Spirit of Discovery in July 2019, the first of two sister cruise ships (Spirit of Adventure in 2020). These are the first new-build ships for cruising ever for Saga, why had previously bought and refurbished existing cruise ships. The Spirit of Discovery holds 999 passengers and in this I discuss the 8 things that I think are best about the ship, and show and explain why. I also talk about one major watch-out and issue that could stop you from cruising.

Note: I travelled as a guest of the cruise line on a pre-naming cruise before making this video. Saga Cruises had no input in the video and content.

** Subscribe to my channel: http://bit.ly/TFT_YouTube2
** Buy one of my unique Cruise T-shirts: http://bit.ly/TFTStore
** Get great cruise deals via CRUISEDIRECT.COM: http://bit.ly/TFTBookCruise

Gary Bembridge's Tips For Travellers aims to help you make more of your precious travel time and money on land and when cruising the oceans or rivers of the world. To help you, in every video I draw on my first-hand tips and advice from travelling every month for over 20 years and 60+ cruises.

Follow Tips For Travellers on:
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/garybembridge
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tipsfortravellers
- Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/garybembridge

Should you cruise to Iceland? If you want to visit Iceland what are the pros and cons of cruising over doing a land-based visit. There are many good things about taking a cruise, and I explore the 6 best pros of cruising to Iceland before looking at the 3 top things you need to consider that may make a land-based trip a better option for you.

Note: I travelled as a guest of Saga Cruises on a round Iceland cruise when making this video. A lot of the footage and tips also draw on my Voyages To Antiquity cruise to Iceland last year too.

** Buy my Cruise T-shirts: http://bit.ly/TFTStore
** USA cruisers get great cruise deals CRUISEDIRECT.COM: http://bit.ly/TFTBookCruise
** UK Cruisers get great cruise deals with CRUISE.CO.UK: http://bit.ly/BookCruiseUK

Gary Bembridge's Tips For Travellers aims to help you make more of your precious travel time and money on land and when cruising the oceans or rivers of the world. To help you, in every video I draw on my first-hand tips and advice from travelling every month for over 20 years and 60+ cruises.

Follow Tips For Travellers on:
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/garybembridge
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tipsfortravellers
- Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/garybembridge

Discover the 10 biggest cruise rip offs that you need to watch out for, and tips on how to avoid or overcome them. There are a number of things that, if you are not careful, you could find you are being ripped off and spending too much on. These are the 10 main rip offs that I have seen and watch out for when I go cruising.

SUPPORT THE CHANNEL BY:
Buying my Cruise T-shirts: http://bit.ly/TFTStore
Booking your next cruise with CRUISEDIRECT.COM: http://bit.ly/TFTBookCruise

Gary Bembridge's Tips For Travellers aims to help you make more of your precious travel time and money on land and when cruising the oceans or rivers of the world. To help you, in every video I draw on my first-hand tips and advice from travelling every month for over 20 years and 74 cruises to date.

Follow Tips For Travellers on:
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/garybembridge
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tipsfortravellers
- Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/garybembridge

I give the answers to 8 of the more offbeat, unconventional and unusual questions that many passengers, including me at one time, were afraid or embarrassed to ask. I explore everything from what water is in the toilets to how many people die on a cruise and what happens to the body and what waste is (and is not) out into the ocean. Find out the answers to some of the more offbeat questions many cruise passengers have about cruise ships and cruising.

SUPPORT THE CHANNEL BY:
Buying my Cruise T-shirts: http://bit.ly/TFTStoreBooking your next cruise with CRUISEDIRECT.COM: http://bit.ly/TFTBookCruise

Gary Bembridge's Tips For Travellers aims to help you make more of your precious travel time and money on land and when cruising the oceans or rivers of the world. To help you, in every video I draw on my first-hand tips and advice from travelling every month for over 20 years and 74 cruises at time of making this video.

Follow Tips For Travellers on:
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/garybembridge

- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tipsfortravellers

- Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/garybembridge

Operators looking to deploy IPTV and Video on Demand will benefit from faster, lower-risk implementations that enable them to offer more services to users through a major partnership between Dune HD and Beenius announced today at TelcoTV2012. This will be demonstrated on the Beenius booth (number 105) at TelcoTV.

As part of the partnership, Dune HD’s advanced set-top boxes have been certified by Beenius and are now integrated with Beenius’ Beesmart open, flexible, and feature-rich interactive TV middleware platform. Together this provides an adaptable, integrated and best of breed solution to operators and system integrators, backed by the engineering expertise of both partners.

Octoshape announced a partnership with INVISO to deliver Internet TV contribution services throughout Latin America.

"At INVISO, we seek the most innovative and high quality products to serve our customers through the brands we represent,” said Jose Luis Reyes, Vice President for Sales and Operations, INVISO. “In the case of Octoshape, we found a company and a product that bring these qualities to our supply chain, sales and service.”

Octoshape offers an innovative cloud-based solution that provides instant infrastructure for the distribution of both linear and video on demand content. The Octoshape Infinite Uplink service provides point-to-point distribution of TV signals over the Internet for source signal acquisition to traditional IPTV and cable headends as an alternative to traditional methods like satellite and video fiber.

Dune HD announces a new partnership with Qarva designed to enhance the IPTV experience. The integration of Qarva’s FastSwitch technology into Dune HD’s digital media players and set-top boxes will give IPTV subscribers improved interaction and higher quality through faster channel changing and the elimination of packet loss. The joint solution will be demonstrated by Dune HD on stand 17 at TV Connect MENA 2012.

An enhanced, high quality experience is proven to increase subscriber loyalty and is central to operators reducing churn and growing revenues. FastSwitch improves the viewing experience by dramatically reducing the lag associated with controlling IPTV services, bringing response times down from 5 seconds to less than half a second - in line with the speeds achieved through traditional TV broadcast channels. Through its integral Packet Loss Recovery technology, FastSwitch also eliminates IPTV issues such as picture freezing and blocking, delivering an improved viewing performance.

This sector has long been battered by forces beyond its control.

His unforced errors would make it hard on a U.S. manufacturer.

They prey on panic — and spurn attempts to quench it.

Whatever the opposite of it is, that’s what Democrats should be running on.

Trump’s attempted manipulations of official metrics degrade our democracy, economy and public safety.

Can you really blame voters, disillusioned and disappointed as they are, for tuning out the onslaught on American democracy?

Any economic improvements aren’t helped by his actions.

The latest immigration rule is based on obvious lies.

A new policy is keeping hundreds of families from obtaining visas

And now, we’re woefully unprepared.

Archaic computer technology is hampering the effort to combat the effects of covid-19 in the United States.