Has Ray White gone Google?

Renai LeMay
Thursday, 18 November 2010 09:45

IT Industry - Strategy

Speculation is this morning running rampant that Google will announce real estate giant Ray White has implemented the search giant's flagship Google Apps suite, after Ray White staff posted their jubilation at 'going Google' online this morning.

'Ray White Group 'first mover' '” ready for a significant announcement with Google in the [real estate] space. Here comes 'G5'² cloud-based technology,' wrote Ray White New Zealand chief executive Carey Smith on Twitter this morning, in a somewhat cryptic post.

'Ray White has gone Google. A platform for a new generation of services and thinking,' added Ben White, whose LinkedIn profile lists him as a non-executive director at the real estate giant. 'Ray White & Google '¦ sounds like a match!!' added Chris Wilkins, the business owner of Ray White Drummoyne.

An individual named David Fry also posted about the issue, linking to a website called 'Channel 5'³, which appears to deal with internal communication at Ray White and may be the platform for the Google Apps deployment.

Neither Ray White or Google spokespeople could immediately comment on the posts, but Google has a press conference scheduled for 11AM this morning where it plans to reveal two new Australian enterprise customers of Google Apps, the first of which is expected to be Flight Centre. If Ray White has deployed Google Apps, the rollout will be a significant one '” the real estate giant has over 1000 individual offices spread across Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, China, India and the United Arab Emirates.