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Business Solutions

CLOUD ARCHITECTURE MATTERS:

ARE YOU FUTURE-PROOF READY?

DONNIE LAW
Founder, CEO & Chief Software Architect
REMLogics

VITO SOLIMENE
Founder & Chief Technical Officer
Nextworld

THE CLOUD TECHNOLOGY AND REAL ESTATE
MANAGEMENT (REM) software landscapes are
changing more rapidly than ever before and it’s hard to
keep up with what’s coming next. Many CIOs are finally
breathing easier now that the cloud has taken hold as a
standard in the real estate industry after years of concern
over security, platform reliability, integrations, disaster
recovery, and access to data 24/7.

Surprisingly, there are still technology laggards out there Cloud Architecture Matters
operating their critical enterprise resource planning Cloud architecture matters because not all clouds are
(ERP) and REM applications on custom-built legacy created equal and knowing the difference is key to your
and on-premise systems that have no future. They are success. ERP REM software vendors have been touting the
only now looking to go to the cloud two decades after term “future proof” over the past year. But what does future
Salesforce introduced the software as a service (SaaS) proof really mean and how can you tell if a cloud vendor’s
model back in 1999. 1 foundation is based on a future proof platform? Here is a
list of considerations when evaluating a cloud solution:
Other industries were early adopters of the cloud, but
it took our industry over a decade after the launch of 1. SaaS applications architected from the ground up in
Salesforce to finally start embracing it—mainly because the cloud on top of a powerful development platform.
many ERP REM software vendors were built on old There are benefits to using a solution that was built from
technology platforms that weren’t easily adaptable to the ground up in the cloud versus using one that is essen-
the cloud. The only way for these vendors to get to the tially a warmed-over hosted solution. Truly architecting
cloud was to rewrite/recode their applications or acquire for the cloud means you can take advantage of features
the technology to get there. So, if you are already on the like true multi-tenancy, lower cost of ownership, elastic
cloud or looking to go to the cloud you must consider scaling and a stateless architecture.
these questions: What happens when the next wave of
cloud technology comes? Will I be ready? Am I already Having access to the same platform on which your applica-
behind? How can I tell if I’m using the right cloud tions were built eases the deployment of custom solutions.
architecture? Continued on page 44

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