It used to be that in order to manage your properties, be it apartments, mobile homes, or office space, each of the managers would have to store the data on their own machines either on software built for that purpose or with an assortment of personal databases and/or spreadsheets. In order for a central office to be able to view that information or do any sort of reporting, the individual managers would have to mail a floppy disk to the central office, or, as things became more advanced, email or ftp that information. IT Managers hoped that the property managers were backing up their software in case of computer crashes, but never actually knowing if that was occurring or if the backups were valid. Among the other problems that were sure to occur in these scenarios were differing versions of the software, being tied down to a specific operating system, being tied down to a specific computer (the one with the installation), and difficulty correcting problems in the data from a remote location.
I talk about those things as if they are archaic when, in fact, many companies still rely upon these decentralized programs and databases and outdated methods to manage their...