cious resources to data management. Simply put, DaaS is good.
That is especially true in the world of real estate data, where a small cadre of data providers have been operating in the flat file world for decades with little innovation. But why not cut through this antiquated process and provide the data to customers in a database — its natural habitat — that is man- aged and curated for them? That’s what DaaS can do. Here’s how DaaS does that in slightly more detailed and tech- nical language: DaaS is a private instance of a fully managed SQL server database hosted in the cloud and provisioned for customer use. In this solution, no files are extracted,
downloaded or ingested by the cus- tomer; the customer simply access- es the database directly in the cloud.
WHAT IS DAAS? Before getting to some concrete benefits and use cases for real estate DaaS, a definition is in order. At its core, DaaS is data in its natu- ral habitat: a database. Many companies now access data through antiquated flat files extracted from a database and then delivered to them via FTP. Once they receive the files, they usually upload them back into their own database so they are able to access and ana- lyze the data in an efficient manner.
WHAT DAAS IS NOT It’s also important to understand what DaaS is not. First, DaaS is not just a new data delivery method. Given the afore- mentioned definition of DaaS, it might be tempting to think of it as the newest and spiffiest delivery method that’s better than the flat file delivery method. On the con- trary, DaaS is a publishing system at heart; it’s not just a delivery method. It’s vibrant. It’s alive. It’s
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