ARGUS Software, formerly Realm Business Solutions, is a company that produces financial software for the commercial real estate industry.

The company's flagship products perform valuation and projections. The most widely known and used product is ARGUS Valuation - DCF, a Discounted Cash Flow

Discounted cash flow

In finance, discounted cash flow analysis is a method of valuing a project, company, or asset using the concepts of the time value of money...

 (DCF) financial analysis program to forecast cash flows and value for real estate properties in markets. ARGUS Valuation - DCF was originally released in 1987 for DOS

DOS

DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...

, and ARGUS Valuation - DCF for Windows, was released in 1994. The current record shows estimated annual revenue $24.7 million, headquarter located in Houston with employee size more than 1,000.

Ownership

In April of 2011 Altus Group announced it was purchasing Realm Solutions Inc, the owner of ARGUS Software, for aggregate consideration of $130 million USD. Altus Group is a publicly traded Canadian company based in Toronto and is the leading multidisciplinary provider of independent, professional real estate services. The previous owners of Realm Solutions had been the private equity firms Lightyear Capital

Lightyear Capital

Lightyear Capital is a private equity firm focused on leveraged buyout and growth capital investments in financial services companies.The firm, which is based in New York City, was founded in 2002 with the backing of UBS AG by Donald Marron. Marron is best known for building up PaineWebber over a...

 and Insight Venture Partners

Insight Venture Partners

Insight Venture Partners is a New York-based private equity and venture capital firm founded in 1995 by Jeff Horing and Jerry Murdock. The firm focuses exclusively on software and Internet-enabled businesses and currently has a capital base of approximately $5 billion.The firm’s Executive Advisory...

. In 2006, Insight Venture Partners, a venture capital

Venture capital

Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...

 firm focused on software and Internet services, merged it's portfolio company, Circle Software, into Realm Business Solutions, the company's predecessor. Realm Business Solutions was owned by Lightyear Capital, a private equity firm focused on financial services including financial technology.

Products

The current version of ARGUS Valuation - DCF is v.15, and this solution is available in English, French, German, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese.

ARGUS Software provides many software solutions that standardize the commercial real estate transaction

Real estate transaction

A real estate transaction is the process whereby rights in a unit of property is transferred between two or more parties, e.g. in case of conveyance one party being the seller and the other being the buyer...

 process and asset management worldwide.

• ARGUS Appraisal Reporting Solution
• ARGUS Valuation - DCF (This product was formerly known as ARGUS)
• ARGUS Valuation - Capitalisation (This product was formerly known as Circle Investor.)
• ARGUS Asset Management (This product was formerly known as DYNA)
• ARGUS Property Budget (This product was formerly known as DYNA BUDGET)

ARGUS provides products to address the planning and budget process for commercial real estate development projects.

• ARGUS Developer (This product was formerly known as Circle Developer.)
• ARGUS Development Budget

ARGUS provides solutions to manage commercial real estate portfolios in a complete life cycle approach

• ARGUS Enterprise
• ARGUS Valuation - Cashflow
• ARGUS Lease CRM

ARGUS Zone Collaboration Platform

ARGUS released a web based collaboration platform for the worldwide market in June of 2008 called ARGUSZone.com. ARGUS Zone integrates all phases of transaction activity across the commercial real estate markets worldwide. Argus Zone incorporates eLearning and product support with a complete collaboration environment based on Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

SharePoint. ARGUS Zone also provides a single gateway for global transactions, ARGUS Transaction Zone, which includes RIISNET.com a next generation broker-driven transaction platform.

Philanthropy

The company donated software licenses to the National University of Singapore

National University of Singapore

The National University of Singapore is Singapore's oldest university. It is the largest university in the country in terms of student enrollment and curriculum offered....

's Department of Real Estate.

The company regularly participates in fund raising with the Realcomm organization.

External links

• ARGUS Software (company website)
• ARGUS Zone (company website)
• ARGUS Global Viewpoints of Commercial Real Estate (Company blog)