Geoffrey Kasselman, SIOR,
LEED AP
Kevin McGowan, SIOR,
CCIM
Gary Joel Schacker, SIOR
It's More than Fluff
Kasselman goes on to note a number of additional
advantages of cloud computing. “It’s dynamically
scalable; you can consume as much or as little as
you need, by the hour, day, week, month or year, so
you can match that up to your company’s changing
needs, which are also dynamic,” he says. You would
begin, he explains, with a baseline assessment of
what your company’s IT needs are–the number of
people you have and expect to have in the future,
the number of apps being utilized by your personnel, and so on. The flexibility of the
cloud is impressive, he continues. “When the next
version of any given software is released and you
want to jump to that platform you can simply do
so by contacting your cloud service provider and
authorizing the change,” he explains.
In addition, says Kasselman, it moves computer
costs from “Capex” to “Opex,” because you’re no
longer investing in depreciating assets like servers,
or hardware on site. “You’re simply paying vendors
for access to your platform or information; that’s
significant,” he asserts. “The cloud should also pro-
duce operating cost savings.”
In fact, says Kasselman, he has realized sig-
nificant savings by moving to the cloud. “The cost
model for a server would be $1,500 for hardware,
$300-$500 for software licenses, and $1,000 a
month for third-party tech support,” he shares.
“Instead, for $99 a year I have 50 gigs of storage
and no other costs. I can put databases in there, and
they’re constantly being backed up. If I’m offline
whatever is on my hard drive at that moment is the
most current version, but as soon as I connect the
Internet syncs with what has been updated. And if I
lose my iPod, I just get a new device and download
my data from the cloud.”
Danny Zelonker, SIOR,
CCIM
Numerous Uses Cited
The SIORs who are on the cloud are using it in a
number of ways to enhance their practices. “I use
Clientlook, which is offered at a discount to CCIMs
and SIORs; I pay $26.95 a month,” notes Zelonker.
“This program lets me put all my deals online and
invite anyone else involved in the deal so we can
follow progress. It is great for teams; I invite all brokers, principals, attorneys, contractors, architects,
etc. I post everything as a PDF.” This is a little more
technical, he notes, because you have to bring your
contacts in by transferring them to an MS Excel
format, “But they have great technical support,”
he says. “I also have Google Docs and Dropbox,
both of which are free, but have migrated to the
Apple program for ease of use,” Zelonker adds.
