When it comes to property management software, every company’s needs are unique. But one thing many companies have in common, according to a recent survey by a software review website, is a desire to increase the operational efficiency and effectiveness of their properties through smart software solutions. Companies across many industries are finding that that their technology goals are more easily achieved when working with fewer vendors. Saving time and money and increasing productivity and efficiency are motivating factors for such a shift, not to mention that single stack technology solutions are integral to building useful databases, better serving customers, and producing dynamic business intelligence. A recent survey from software review provider Software Advice provided insight into what needs and expectations property managers have from industry-specific software.  The company’s website provides detailed reviews, comparisons and research to help property managers choose the right software. Aundraya Ruse is an Editorial Coordinator for Software Advice. She helps manage Software Advice’s content and primary research across six enterprise software markets, including property management and construction. She answered a few questions for us about overarching trends in property  management software, as revealed by the summary report findings. 1. What overall conclusions can you make about the state of the property management software industry based on the results of this survey? Ruse: We found the majority of property management software buyers in our sample are looking to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their property management operations. This was by far the most common reason buyers purchase property management software (based on responses from our full report). Reasons for Purchasing – High Level Overview   We also learned most of these buyers were using spreadsheets or other manual methods to manage their properties, while buyers already using property management software...

Technology has known massive development in the last few decades. The newer technologies surpass the older ones when they’re created as their upgrades. The surround sound replaced stereo, the word processor superseded the typewriter, and high-definition television replaced standard-definition TV. But there is one technology that ejected another although it’s far worse than it: cellphone voice calls. A recent survey conducted by Pew Internet & American Life Prospect reflects that 72% of cell owners in America experienced dropped calls, and 32% face this problem a few times a week or more. Much to everyone’s displease, failed calls, incomprehensible speech and poor voice quality exist and are a major problem for a large number of people; this problem won’t disappear anytime soon, despite the efforts of the carriers. Convenience and ability trumped quality, the mobile phone and especially the smartphone replaced the traditional landlines, changing the nature of communication altogether. With every American that drops the landline for a cellphone, the importance of strong connection at home grows exponentially. The quality of a call that started on the street decreases significantly when entering the house, barely adequate signals turn worse when they have concrete, metal, and multiple walls to penetrate. Two main factors cause the poor signal: the distance from the closest cell tower and the obstructions that cause interference. Cell coverage comes from strategically placed cell towers provided by the carriers. Whenever within the network, the mobile device automatically connects with the closest one and as you move it jumps to the next closest tower. As you further from the nearest tower and get close to the edge of your carrier’s coverage area you’ll experience degraded signal; when you’re too far to maintain a consistent connection, your call will drop. Furthermore, every object standing...

Franklin Street Family Apartments, a new affordable community in Mountain View, Calif., has a tech-savvy benefactor. The $23.4 million multifamily community, which was developed by ROEM Corp., received $6.5 million in equity from Google. The tech giant also provided a grant to provide computers and free Internet access to residents. “Our investment in Franklin Street Family Apartments is helping to create 51 new affordable housing units for families,” Kojo Ako-Asare, head of Google’s corporate finance team, says. “Mountain View has been a wonderful home to Google, so we couldn’t be more thrilled to help others make this community their home as well.” Franklin Street Family Apartments includes one-, two- and three-bedroom floor plans. There are 92 parking spaces available for residents, but the community is also located in close proximity to public transportation, making the apartments eco-conscious. Other green elements include photovoltaic panes, water and energy-efficient appliances and transit passes for residents. “Google remains committed to supporting affordable housing options in areas that allow for use of alternative transportation,” Ako-Asare says. Though the community just recently celebrated its grand opening, Franklin Street Family Apartments is already 100 percent occupied. Read more about Franklin Street Family Apartments here. Jessica Fiur is News Editor at Multi-Housing News. Find more of her insights on multifamily living on the “What Renters Want”...

A new generation of highly-efficient buildings, focused on carbon reduction and livability, demonstrate that smart living calls for tech and green combined. The green building movement is not limited to new construction projects; green principles can be easily incorporated into existing environments as well by overhauling interiors, using eco-friendly materials and supplies, and educating on green practices. Installing solar panels and occupancy sensors, putting in better insulation, using energy star-rated appliances or energy-efficient light bulbs are only a few of the improvements that property owners can make in order to green their offices without building from the ground up. DPR Construction, a national technical builder specializing in highly complex and sustainable projects, has achieved net-zero energy consumption in its Phoenix Regional Office, a 40-year old building located in the Discovery Triangle. The outfit has been officially certified as a Net-Zero Energy Building (NZEB) by the International Living Future Institute (ILFI) through its Living Building Challenge (SM) program, making it the largest building in the world and only the second in the United States to achieve NZEB certification to date. “Net-zero is possible, even in one of the most extreme climates in the country,” said Dave Elrod, Regional Manager, DPR Construction. “We purposely chose a building that was nearing the end of its intended life cycle in a redeveloping area to show our commitment to Phoenix and to demonstrate the impact revitalization can have on an urban environment. This building is another proof point of our ability to walk the walk of sustainability. Our Phoenix office will be a ‘living lab’ where anyone can see firsthand how our sustainable technologies work together in real life.” Among several outstanding enhancements, the high-profile office building includes operable windows that work in tandem with the energy monitoring system...

Some memories are so powerful that you’d want to mark them somehow more than just in your mind. Memories that you want to be able to access from miles away, simply displayed on a map, memories that describe themselves through photos, notes, and even videos. It can be a new place that you’ve visited, it can be a recurring place you go to for family reunions, it can be a restaurant that marks anniversaries with your loved one, your amazing work place, or even your home. Under this concept Findery landed on Google Maps. Serial entrepreneur Caterina Fake, known as the co-founder of Flickr, sensed the need for a tool that allows internet lovers to gather their memories in a soulful and sincere manner, without that “social peacocking” some of the apps today offer. She describes it as an attempt to bring humanity back on the internet, and the intention behind this new network is to tell the story of your life, connecting it with places. You are the one to decide of it’s for the general public or for your eyes only. Aside from the personal side of Findery, business owners can sign up for accounts. Real estate company Corcoran has already done so and is providing information about its properties and other local knowledge on the network, in an attempt to attract future clients. This tells a lot about the potential of this idea: out-of-towners, tourists or people who need to relocate due to their work or school, can easily learn about the new city from the people who placed notes with their experiences. Prospective renters could easily pull up Google Maps and search for apartment communities in the area they are interested in moving to. Everything is laid out on a...

Take a minute to think about your email inbox. Visualize it. Did your heart rate go up? A recent study conducted by the University of California, Irvine attached heart rate monitors to two test groups of workers – one with access to email and the other without – and found that those with email access had steady “high alert” heart rates. The group without email access reported feeling less stressed and better able to focus on the tasks at hand. Yikes! But we need our email, right? If you’re in real estate or property management, the answer is yes. From clients wanting to set up appointments to property notifications to contract updates, a ton of useful information lands in your inbox each and every day. So how can you shrink both your inbox and your stress levels? We’ve got three tips and three tools that will help you manage the constant influx of emails generated by today’s 24/7 real estate industry. 3 Steps to Optimize Your Inbox 1.    Priorities, schmiorities Having a strategy that allows you to sort your email quickly is key. Start by deleting the obviously unnecessary emails in your inbox. Are there emails you’d like to read later that don’t require a response, like newsletters or special offers? Create a folder with a title like “Read Later” and move these emails out of your inbox. Next, go down the list and tackle any email you can reply to in two minutes or less, no matter the level of urgency. Better to deal with minor concerns and get emails out of the way than to leave them lurking in your inbox until later. Finally, use your sorting filter to flip your inbox so the oldest emails appear at the top. Working backwards...

Moments of our life materialize into memories; photos, movies, music, their number increases from one year to the next.  In a world where the electronic format has gained supremacy, our devices need a secure, offsite replication spot where these electronic records of days gone by are backed up and secured. These days information has moved to the cloud, in theory. Practically we still feel the need to possess the information in a material form, one that we can actually touch and take with us to the highest mountain where internet is not yet present. And for that we have portable hard disk drives. There are many choices in such drives these days, and it’s difficult as ever to choose the best. Depending on your needs, you might find the following helpful. Western Digital My Passport This is a small drive (0.82 x 4.4 x 3.2 inches) that can store up to 2TB of data. The newest versions of it feature the new USB 3.0 cable, which is still compatible with USB 2.0. The new port gives the hard drive a significant performance boost, speed-wise. It has multiple back-up options including making automated duplicates of any file you save and upload what you save to a Dropbox account. The WD Drive Utilities can run quick or complete drive tests to look for bad sectors, it can also set the sleep timer to limit power consumption, use “drive erase” to reformat the drive, or register you for customer support. WD Security is an application that locks the drive with a password; however, “WD cannot retrieve your password. If you forget your password, you will permanently lose access to your data.” The price ranges from $80-$150. Seagate Backup Plus The successor of GoFlex is also a success...

I’m always curious to discover what innovations manufacturers have brought to the market when they announce new smartphone devices. Fortunately for my budget, I can’t purchase all those that make my eyebrows rise. Like most, I am on a standard payment plan that limits me to upgrade every two years. However, smartphones have hit a level where innovation has slowed down. At this point, they all flaunt beautiful screens and high-quality cameras. The new models don’t differ drastically from their previous versions, and this decreases the urge to purchase newer ones more frequently. Fewer and fewer consumers are upgrading year after year. Obviously, this is not so good for the business and the big players in the US know it, so they decided it was time they took action. First it was T-Mobile USA who announced their new plan called T-Mobile Jump. It entails an upfront payment for a smartphone followed by a period of monthly payments. This action can be done twice a year and the down payment amount is quite decent – $146 for an iPhone 5. AT&T followed with their AT&T Next, a plan that encourages customers to upgrade their phone once a year instead of every two years. They’re proposal is more of a phone rental than a phone purchase – there will be no upfront payment, just monthly installments for a year that vary based on the device. In the case of “renting” an iPhone 5, the customer would pay zero upfront, followed by $32.50 every month for a year. Once the period is over, the customer can upgrade to a new smartphone. Verizon is said to be coming out with the VZ Edge, a plan that supposedly allows the users to upgrade their phone once they’ve paid off...

You might not have realized it, but there are robots among us. Thanks to dramatic advances in technology, the real estate industry has evolved rapidly over the past few decades, and those changes have not been limited to the smartphone/tablet revolution. The field of robotics has progressed rapidly, too, making it possible for property owners and managers to enjoy the benefits of robots that can mow lawns, take listings photos and even sell sundries to residents in need. Want to learn more about today’s crop of real estate robots? Keep reading to discover our four favorites. The Robot Shop Q: When can a robot be a profit-generating resident amenity for multifamily housing? A: When it takes the form of a robotic convenience store! Imagine supplying residents with a convenient, nearby shop that never closes and never has staffing problems. A place tired parents can visit when they run out of milk, without having to bundle the kids into the car or find a sitter. A place students can grab a snack without taking time away from their studies. A place that generates revenue by providing a useful, fully-automated service. Enter the robot shop. Robotic convenience stores starting popping up at apartment complexes in Texas last year, packed to the gills with everything from salty snacks to cleaning supplies to motor oil. These self-contained shops can be placed indoors or outdoors, stock up to 200 products and are open 24/7 – ideal for high-traffic complexes. Each module is able to accept cash, credit and debit cards. The stores come equipped with video surveillance and can be managed online, in real time. Shop24 Global LLC, the company that produces these robot shops, takes care of all the stocking and maintenance issues, so housing staff can stay...

In a world where people are always on the road to somewhere, portability is key to ensure that technology doesn’t slow them down. The power of notebooks has been on the rise for quite some time now, and the leading product developers continue to improve their best-in-class work each year. Two notable new models caught our eye with power, light weight, and gorgeous looks: the 13-inch MacBook Air and the 13-inch Sony Vaio Pro. The major difference is in the OS – OS X Mountain Lion for the Air and Windows 8 for the Vaio. We’ve briefly presented the new air of the new MacBook Air 13, but it deserves a bit of additional attention. Strong features make it the leading slim and light laptop in the US.  According to NPD, it outsold all Windows Ultrabooks combined in the US retail market during the first trimester of 2013. Ageless in appearance, Apple hasn’t changed the Air’s physical design in years, but it still transports you to the future. The fact that it’s so slim – only 0.11-0.68 inches thick and 2.96 lbs. light, makes some think it is not solid enough, but it is not fragile either. The aluminum case is much more resistant than it feels. If the design needs no alteration (actually, competitors seem to find inspiration in the Air’s lines), the technical specs show continuous focus. The new features make the device even more fabulous than the previous models: the fourth generation processor Intel Haswell, made available the new i7 of 2.0GHz that drives 12 hours of battery life. The battery life should improve even further under the OS X Mavericks, which will add even more battery life-preserving features to Apple’s OS. The 802.11 ac Wi-Fi networking card complemented by the...

According to Gartner, the worldwide PC shipments are expected to drop from 341 million units in 2012 to 305 million this year (-10.6 percent), and reduce to 289 million in 2014. Sales are on a downslide partly because of the competition from tablets, and even smartphones to some extent. At a first glance, this decrease may seem worthy of one of those frequently used online headlines like “The end of the PC era.” Up close, it appears like PCs have arrived at an equilibrium. Those currently in use have enough power to satisfy the needs of most users, while the incremental improvements in the newer models are not enough to warrant investment in another PC. For the business environment, the stable, reliable, unexciting PC remains an important device. The Gartner report divides the devices and provides shipment numbers for other ones, also, such as “ultramobiles,” tablets and mobile phones. Each research firm has developed its own measurement system, and the categories are not always cohesive. For Gartner, ultramobiles include “Chromebooks, thin and light clamshell designs, and slate and hybrid devices running Windows 8.” All these sectors are thriving, the report shows that the overall shipments are up 5.9 percent this year, and predicts further growth for next year. An increase of over 60 percent year over year is forecasted for tablets as consumers and professionals have discovered that portable devices can meet many of their needs, freeing them from their desktops and allowing them to move freely. The lower priced basic tablets seem to be taking up a higher share and at a faster pace than previously anticipated. Case in point: sales of the iPad Mini represented already 60 percent of overall iOS tablet sales for the first quarter of 2013. “The increased availability...

With increasing attention and concern about online real estate data distribution practices and policies, many Multiple-Listing Services are seeking better control of their members’ listing information and looking for opportunities to direct qualified lead traffic straight to brokers and agents. After extensive engagement with high-level MLS officials and National Association of REALTORS® executives, as well as input from thousands of Realtors®, Point2 has come up with an exciting alternative to third party real estate aggregation. Among the organizations taking advantage of this exciting new offering so far is The Greater El Paso Association of REALTORS® (GEPAR), which has partnered with Point2, to develop a public-facing real estate listings portal focused on the greater El Paso area. The new website, ElPasoTX.com, provides consumers with information about local properties for sale and rent using timely and accurate data that originates from the GEPAR Multiple Listings Service (MLS). In a move to benefit their 1,900 members, GEPAR created this competitive public portal to send qualified leads directly to the listing brokers and agents. “Leveraging the same platform already in use for high-traffic international real estate portals like Point2 Homes and PropertyShark, the technology behind our El Paso portal is proven and ready to provide results to GEPAR’s members,” commented Saul Klein, Industry Principal for Point2. “GEPAR has always been on the forefront of technology. We’re very happy to have this opportunity to work with them to bring El Paso a world-class real estate search portal that provides the accurate and up-to-date listing data that today’s consumers demand.” Point2’s Public Facing MLS Portal Initiative is a way for MLS’ to directly monetize their listing data on a public-facing website that looks great and is easy to navigate and maintain. This white label real estate sales solution, featuring user-friendly, customized...

Here at Point2, we help real estate agents market themselves and their properties. That means we spend a lot of time looking at listing photos. We’ve seen them all – the good, the bad and the truly incomprehensible. While we all know that evocative listing photos can promote a property by encouraging viewers to picture themselves living in the space, we can’t help but wonder: what if these millions of images that are being traded across the Internet by agents, owners and real estate portals could do even more? Don’t worry, this is not an article about the future of smell-o-vision. Instead we take a look at today’s smart photos to show you how a curbside snapshot can be so much more than just a pretty picture. Here are three new real estate marketing applications brought to you by advances in imaging technology. Share Locations What’s the first rule in real estate? Location, location, location. This is reason enough to geotag your listing photos. Geotagging is the practice of associating your images with a geographical location. Geotags tell your audience, and search engines, where a photo was taken. Geo-data makes it easy to add another layer of ‘searchability’ to your photos so consumers can find you based on a desirable location rather just than a desirable set of search criteria. With so many people using their mobile devices to find properties, geotags help them search for nearby homes more easily. Although most of today’s smartphones and digital cameras can add geotags to your photos automatically, real estate agents and brokers might want to check out RealtorCam, an iOS app that adds location and date information to your photos, plus easy custom captions. Viewers can see how great a house looks, where it’s located and...

Increase your property’s visibility to perspective clients while promoting tenant engagement through advances in near-field communication. You may recall advertisements for various smartphones where file and photo sharing occur by simply bringing the devices within a few centimeters of each other. You may have also seen SmartPass devices in stores and vending machines that allow customers to pay for products and services by passing their credit card over a tag. Such technologies are examples of near-field communication (NFC), a rapidly growing series of standards that allow mobile devices to communicate with other devices within close proximity. NFC has taken hold in various pockets of commerce and entertainment, making transactions faster and more convenient. Ticketing for transportation and entertainment venues around the globe utilize cards and key fobs to permit access goods and services. Box offices allow patrons to present digital tickets in place of their paper counterparts. Loyalty programs for various stores rely on stickers and cards to connect customers to rewards and discounts. Perhaps most importantly, many of us have offered silent expressions of gratitude as our children quietly enjoy multi-player gaming on separate devices while sitting in the back seat of the car. It sure beats arguing over the radio station. The versatility of NFC has proven to be its greatest asset. NFC standards permit a nearly effortless exchange of images, videos, data and text. It can replace paper while still leaving a trail suitable for verification and authenticity. As the market continues to grow, the potential of NFC will continue to expand. Near-field communication lends itself to practical and fun uses within the multifamily housing industry: – Leasing agents can create and instantly share marketing cards that include contact information, property details, property photos, video and more. (Yardi PopCard is a...

The annual Google conference ended a few days ago. This year the event was more developer-centric. Many were disappointed by the lack of new gadgets, but this year’s conference focused on behind-the-scenes action. News about Android, Google Chrome, Google Maps, Google Search, and Google Play took center stage. Android By now, 900 million activations of Android devices have occurred, and more than 48 billion apps installed from the Google Play store. Developers read these numbers as serious interest from the customer side. To aid development efforts, Google introduced a new tool – Android Studio – which allows them to work in multiple languages and for different sizes much easier than ever. Google Chrome Google named it “the most popular browser used in the world” and the 750 million active users worldwide agree. Last year, there were 450 million active users, much of the growth having happened on tablets and phones. And because it is a platform itself, developers use it to build apps, using all open tools offered by Chrome. More news on the operating system will be announced later this year. Google Maps for Mobile For the past ten years, the Google Maps product has been unmatched. Now, changes are making it more user-friendly and will help us discover new places, instead of just taking you from point A to point B. Maps users now have Places Recommendations, meaning that they see what places have been rated and recommended by Google+ friends. The integration with Zagat has been improved to include badges and editorial reviews right in the app. Exclusive offers from different locations can now be displayed directly in the information cards, redeemable on the spot or saved within the app for later use. Google Explore is the new feature that enables...

As YASC DC 2013 draws to a close, clients depart with a greater understanding of what Yardi has to offer and much more. Longstanding clients connected with newcomers, providing mentorship opportunities and an unofficial forum for best practices. Clients connected with their Yardi contacts, building friendships and broadening lines of communication.   Perhaps most importantly, though, clients from across the globe were able to give their feedback to Yardi developers, paving the way for products that are a reflection of clients’ needs. As one client participant told us during the conference: “I can’t reiterate how good it was to know that Yardi was listening to our suggestions and making changes to improve products. Does it get any better than making a good product better?” Yardi’s desire to listen and respond promotes better product development, but it also serves a greater purpose. Company receptivity builds client confidence. In turn, that confidence can result in the investments needed to trigger multiple facets of international business growth. This year’s conference experienced a 30 percent increase in attendance from 2012. It’s a glowing sign that businesses are gearing up for positive change and more efficient practices. As the economy recovers, multiple industries are seeing a surge in business, the long-awaited catalyst needed to propel growth. YASC has helped Yardi’s clients prepare for that wave of change and the success that follows in its wake. Across all of our diverse product lines, Yardi software prepares clients to press forward with the confidence that they need to ensure wise investments, adequate planning, and effortless organization across all levels. The fully integrated and highly configurable products take an individualized approach to business growth. This year, managing that growth has become easier than ever. Embracing the mobile age, clients are furnished with the...

“Virtualization”  is one of the hottest buzzwords in the IT world today.  Virtualizing servers has become a common practice in most large IT shops.  We have recently seen the introduction of virtualization with graphics processing cards (GPUs)  And of special interest to executives and IT professionals exploring Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) for their business, smart phone virtualization may present a solution to security and privacy concerns. Even without the intentional practice of BYOD, the flood of personal smart phones and tablets entering the workplace raises many questions about security.  Today’s workers demand the flexibility to work not just from employer-provided desktops or laptops, but from personal smart phones and tablets. As these devices encourage out-of-office connectivity, productivity and responsiveness, most companies are loath to discourage such behavior. But when personal devices are used to access corporate email, applications and data, both the personal privacy demands of the user and the enterprise’s security and control requirements are simultaneously in need of control points and protection measures.  The same goes for company provided consumer devices, which end up being used not only for business, but the inevitable access of personal email, data and media. So how to build a wall between the personal and corporate worlds, even when using just one device? Virtualization may hold the key. One of the industry leaders in virtualization, VMWare, has recently unveiled their  “MVP” (Mobile Virtualization Platform)  that will allow a company to introduce iOS and Android devices securely into the enterprise.  The access is controlled via a separate workspace on the mobile device that is entirely controlled by the company.  Essentially, personal and business applications and usage are separated. The user of a mobile device MVP-enabled now has 2 personas:  Personal and business.  The user can toggle between...

Companies strive to better understand their customers and stay a step ahead of their competitors. Various methods of accomplishing these goals have come and gone over the years but none has stirred as much buzz as Big Data. Through such analytics, companies now have the power to explore human-generated data in addition to transactions, market trends, and interactions with customers. In the past, the real estate market operated through a rearview mirror. Forecasts were cloudy, based on month-old figures at best. Today, Big Data allows residential and commercial firms to step forward with trends as they happen, making predictions based on real time information. No longer relying on quarter-end results, firms reap the benefits of daily and weekly data on inventory levels, price fluctuation, asking rates and lease rates, and beyond. Analysts can focus these figures on one property, one neighborhood, the entire city or on a national and global level. Big Data has become the most sought-after tool for harvesting, interpreting, and implementing vast quantities of information with adjustable levels of precision. The applications for Big Data seem endless, with common best use cases varying by industry. Big Data could help commercial and residential real estate firms to: predict risks to investments earlier and more accurately, such as depreciation rates or changes in demand adjust construction and operation costs based on the most recent sales and cost data, resulting in fewer setbacks and surprises during project completion create event- and behavior-based targeting analyze daily and weekly sales figures for competitive pricing and profit optimization increase cyber security for a safer online leasing experience for renters monitor energy consumption on properties, identifying areas of resource inefficiency evaluating proposed business strategies and suggesting measurable goals Of all the data harvested, users are gaining the most...

Executives making long-term plans face an interesting juxtaposition: Significant changes lie ahead, but at the same time history is sure to repeat itself. How best to handle this? Move cautiously, but stay open minded and don’t be afraid to try new things. Never has the industry faced as many big changes simultaneously as those coming down the pike. The creation of the real estate investment trust vehicle, the advent of commercial mortgage-backed securities, the introduction of 1031 exchanges—certainly, all these and other big changes have had an impact on the market. But in the Digital Age, change is advancing ever more rapidly and is layered together with sustainability pursuits, new corporate office preferences and changing demographics. Technology by itself represents a big cog in the advancing real estate industry machine. Broadband and wireless communications capabilities and programs to track and analyze operations are only in their beginning stages—and represent only a portion of the possibilities that will impact workplace, housing and consumer venues. A new study published by CoreNet Global predicts that technology will soon be able to adjust the temperature, lighting, sound and other aspects of the workplace to the emotional state of its occupants. Elements as non-technological as the fire extinguisher may be monitored via an embedded microchip. And the U.S. General Services Administration is now mandating that its property managers receive information technology training. On the sustainability front, efforts are now focused on how to analyze all the data being collected on energy use, as well as ways to make small changes in operations that will have a big impact, according to Marc Heisterkamp, director of strategic assets for the U.S. Green Building Council. Municipalities are striving to determine methods of incentivizing greater compliance among property owners within their communities, while...

The primal contest between computer user security and the external threat environment will shift with next generation firewalls. Significantly upgraded over the previous state-of-the-art, next-gen firewalls offer improved visibility into the contemporary Web-based network landscape and a much-enhanced capacity to detect advanced threats. But is this truly a generational performance enhancement, or just the same ol’ technology with an added dash of marketing magic? Let’s take a closer look. Traditional firewall performance includes stateful port/protocol inspection, network address translation (NAT), and virtual private network (VPN) integration. Typical services also include directory support (via Active Directory or similar) that  authenticates and authorizes applications based on users and user groups. Also common is reputation-based filtering blocks applications that have earned a rep for naughty behavior. This helps discourage phishing attempts, virus infiltration, and additional malware sites and applications. Regardless of the vendor, next-gen firewalls include the following features: Application ID & filtering: This area is where next-gen firewalls really make a difference. Instead of the traditional all-or-nothing port opening approach, next-gen firewalls scan and filter traffic based upon the specific applications. Malicious applications that use non-standard ports to spoof countermeasures can be stopped dead in their tracks. SSL and SSH inspection: Enhanced inspection technology means next-gen firewalls can put SSL and SSH encrypted traffic under the microscope. Decrypted traffic is inspected, filtered, and then re-encrypted. Advanced malicious apps that utilize encryption as a detection countermeasure are no longer a threat. Intrusion prevention: Enhanced versatility and robust traffic inspection abilities provide all the functionality of a stand-alone intrusion prevention system. Most next-gen firewalls include full intrusion detection and prevention capability. In short, next-gen firewalls blend a full-service suite of performances – firewall, intrusion prevention, and additional security capabilities – into a single, efficient, high-performance appliance. The move...

Outside of ComicCon, geeking out will typically just garner a few confused looks and questioning tones from those you have inadvertently alienated with your techy banter. But this spring at the Yardi Advanced Solutions* (YASC) you’ll be pleased to know that even the most technical talk will be met with understanding and  inspire new-found possibility. Along with the numerous training sessions and social interactions at YASC this year, you’ll also find a new event: Tech Time. Instituted by Sr. VP of ASP Scott Wiener and Director of ASP Remon Amboy, Tech Time grew from a simple “Can my IT team talk to yours?” inquiry from a client a few years back into a full blown opportunity for you to sit and talk through your questions with our experienced professionals in a one-on-one environment. Thinking of rolling out virtualization and not sure where to start? Can’t decide between iPads and Kindles? Want to talk firewalls?  Whether you’re a CIO who is curious about how we secure the environment or an end user who wants to know how the environment works, this is your chance for one-on-one consultation about case studies, cloud computing, or infrastructure requirements. If you are interested in a little byte-bonding or perhaps just looking for an excuse to break away, make an appointment by contacting [email protected]. *The Spring YASC 2012 — May 22-24, in Washington, D.C. is now open for registration. The conference provides information about the latest updates to your Yardi products and services, as well as opportunities to meet with CSD representatives, IT staff, senior management and sales...