M&G Real Estate has received the Wired Certified Platinum rating for Developments & Redevelopments at its No2 Forbury Place office development in Reading, the first building in Reading to achieve the highest level under the international digital connectivity rating scheme from WiredScore.

Robotic retail assistants and queue-jumping technology have been unveiled at intu shopping centres to test the reactions of shoppers and retailers.

Seven new businesses with big ideas for British retail have joined forces with shopping centre owner intu by taking part in its start-up incubation programme.

Linedata has partnered with ExactBid, a real estate due diligence software company, to integrate ExactBid’s RIMS appraisal management services with the Linedata Capitalstream loan and lease origination and risk management platform.

Real estate software that could revolutionise the way investment managers, owners and managing agents are able to monitor and analyse the market, as well as track, manage and report the performance of their assets and portfolios in real time, has been launched commercially for the first time.

By George Ralph, RFA – Everything is virtual these days. From virtual teams, spread across the globe, which can perform better than traditional on-site teams, to the virtual offices they work in, at home, in the coffee shop, in shared office space. If the right technology is in place, people can work anywhere.

Family Office Networks has launched of an online technology platform that offers family offices access to alternative investment products.

Cortland Capital Market Services is continuing to grow and expand its real estate business by employing Yardi Investment Management to deliver investor reports and automated accounting, allocations and financial consolidations.

By George Ralph, RFA – According to Microsoft and 451 Research, most organisations are working with four cloud vendors, at least. Many firms are utilising public cloud services from the biggies like Amazon and Microsoft, but also want, or need more discrete services to house some applications, and for these services, will opt for private clouds. Today’s firms want applications that bring them business benefits, and if they need to bring on board other cloud services to house them, or to cope with the workload, that’s what they do. Our customers want infrastructure that just works as it should. They don’t really care what or where it is, as long as it is safe, secure, redundant, compliant and flexible.

By George Ralph, RFA – Outsourcing IT is a viable option for many private equity firms who are looking for high quality, enterprise grade technology without the headache of managing it in house.