Seizing the opportunity

In the highly competitive real estate business, a quick response can mean everything. Long & Foster's mobile network helps make sure its agents exceed expectations.

With about 15,000 independent associates and 2,000 of its own employees, Long & Foster is one of the nation's largest privately held residential real-estate companies, its footprint ranging from southern New Jersey into North Carolina. Ever since Mike Koval took the reins as vice president and CIO some eight years ago, he's been pushing the idea of mobility to make the company more responsive to customer needs. In a business where workers often use their car as an office, that means a heavy reliance on mobile devices, which the company is using to impressive effect.

What does your IT infrastructure look like?
Within our main data center we have about 200 individual servers running different applications. We have three SANs [storage-area networks] that total 100TB-plus worth of storage. All that is integrated with Cisco networking communications gear. We also have servers in all of our sales offices, so that's about another 240 servers -- all managed through our systems back at headquarters.

What is the breakdown between company-owned computers and those owned by your independent sales associates?
We have probably 5,000 to 5,500 agents who own their own technology and bring it into our systems. That's complemented by about 4,000 company-owned machines in the field that they can use as well. So, between the two, we have about 8,000 to 8,500 computers on our network on any given day.

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

With about 15,000 independent associates and 2,000 of its own employees, Long & Foster is one of the nation's largest privately held residential real-estate companies, its footprint ranging from southern New Jersey into North Carolina. Ever since Mike Koval took the reins as vice president and CIO some eight years ago, he's been pushing the idea of mobility to make the company more responsive to customer needs. In a business where workers often use their car as an office, that means a heavy reliance on mobile devices, which the company is using to impressive effect.

What does your IT infrastructure look like?
Within our main data center we have about 200 individual servers running different applications. We have three SANs [storage-area networks] that total 100TB-plus worth of storage. All that is integrated with Cisco networking communications gear. We also have servers in all of our sales offices, so that's about another 240 servers -- all managed through our systems back at headquarters.

What is the breakdown between company-owned computers and those owned by your independent sales associates?
We have probably 5,000 to 5,500 agents who own their own technology and bring it into our systems. That's complemented by about 4,000 company-owned machines in the field that they can use as well. So, between the two, we have about 8,000 to 8,500 computers on our network on any given day.

When did you start deploying wireless devices for data?
When I joined the organization in 2000, one of the things I saw that was going to be critical to the success of this business, or pretty much any business for that matter, was the ability to be mobile. So, one of the first projects we did, in the fall of 2000, was to implement 802.11b in every one of our offices, as well as at our corporate headquarters and regional sites. Since then, we’ve upgraded to 802.11g and we're in the process of upgrading to 802.11n in certain areas.

As far as the mobility devices, I brought a BlackBerry into the company in the spring of 2000 and a BlackBerry Enterprise environment in the fall of 2000. We now have thousands of BlackBerries in the organization and also thousands of Treos, and probably hundreds of Windows Mobile devices. And now the hottest thing is, of course, the iPhone. We have a large and rapidly growing population adopting the iPhone. That includes the [AT&T] EDGE [Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution] network version, Version 1, as well as within the last week I probably had 20 to 25 e-mails about agents and employees who have upgraded to the Version 2, the 3G version. Everybody who's gotten one has just fallen in love with the device. We support the 802.11g environment on that, and agents are very pleased.

Click to see: Profile of Mike Koval

Who owns those mobile devices?
If you're an employee, they're owned by the corporation. So, Long & Foster owns 300, maybe 400 BlackBerries. Predominantly the devices are owned by the agents. We have strategic relationships with every carrier, and the agents can get preferred pricing on the device and the service. They go buy their own, they own them, although they are connected to our enterprise environment. We have Microsoft Exchange running ActiveSync for the devices that support that, as well as a BlackBerry Enterprise Server environment that supports BlackBerry users.