Mobility for ‘Immovables’ – Clouds Supporting the Business with Real Estates

Businesses operating with ‘Immovables’ have always demanded high mobility from numerous protagonists within and across the real estate sector. Whereas recent developments of advanced cloud environments such as pervasive cloud and intercloud infrastructures are still in their infancy, their advancements appear to be supportive for this industry. Our contribution refers to the business with real estates as this sector shows several characteristics that predestine it as a showcase due to high and sustainable potential for value generation through clouds and cloud infrastructures. This paper analyses the use of various (types of) cloud applications in the field of real estate. It provides an insight into the structure of the real estate sector (life cycle, value chain, actors), into the state-of-the art of cloud applications, and reveals potential for further developments and unexplored segments of the real estate life cycle and/or value chain.