Key applications on the first release include Johnson Controls Global Best Practices Database, web-enabled computerized maintenance management systems and a web-based facility service request program. The first release also features report-writing capabilities that draw information from disparate enterprise software applications to derive more precise operational data.

Subsequent releases of Bosmart will offer web-based critical facility management tools, benchmarking capabilities and financial reporting applications. The second release of Bosmart will be available to the facility management marketplace in early fall 2001.

The Bosmart demonstration is one of many at the conference's Tech Fair area in this online-crazy area of the country. Jim Young, president of the Jameson Group, stuck with the high-tech focus in his afternoon talk, explaining to attendees that the commercial real estate industry was late coming to the online party, and that access speeds could be 100 times faster than they are today.

And, if you think the constant Internet preoccupation has finally gone away – think again. Young said that our lives would become "more digital in the next 24 months than they have in the past 20 years."

IDRC is the world's leading professional association for managers of corporate real estate, facilities, information technology, human resources, finance and other support units that define corporate infrastructure. The Pacific Northwest event is focusing on how corporate real estate leaders will leverage connected technologies in the new economy. Conference sessions, which started on May 12 and runs through May 16, are being held at a variety of meeting buildings in the Seattle Center.

The conference began with a weekend focal point toward corporate seminars. Dozens of corporate real estate executives arrived early and participated in five, same-track sessions geared toward the latest innovative practices in strategic corporate real estate management.