Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa March 2014 | Page 27

BY WILLEM POTGIETER

How cloud computing benefits property management

N

ot long ago people dreamt about it as
the technology of the future. Today
cloud computing is a reality.

So, what is cloud computing? Simply put, cloud
computing is the practice of using a network of
remote servers hosted on the Internet to store,
manage, and process data, rather than a local
server or a personal computer.

And, what makes it so remarkable?
Cloud computing is easy. It’s easy to deploy, easy
to use, easy to upgrade, and easy to manage.
Cloud computing offers opportunities and major
benefits to property managers across the African
continent. Historically, property and facilities
managers had to invest not only in software, but
also hardware and networks to enable users to get
access to business critical information.
Now cloud computing offers an inexpensive
and quick alternative to deploy mission
critical software. And, it means that property
management systems can be used on a full
spectrum of devices. Or, as clued-up computer
folks say, property management systems are
now device agnostic.

is safe or not. The great news is that security,
back-up and disaster recovery services are
closely tied into cloud offerings. Tight security
and robust access control are high on the
priority list. Taking advantage of virtualisation
technology, cloud environments are designed
to enable optimum scalability, redundancy,
disaster recovery, backups and security.
As the winds of change blow cloud computing
into