ARGUS Enterprise moves to the cloud

Altus Group, a commercial real estate software provider, has launched a cloud-enabled version of its investment and asset management platform, ARGUS Enterprise.

Used by thousands of customers around the world, the new version of ARGUS will enable users to model, forecast, manage, analyse and report on their assets and cash flows from acquisition to disposition, with the ability to store, backup and access ARGUS files in one centralised cloud-based platform.

As a result, Altus hopes the update will offer greater collaboration, streamline workflows across teams and business functions, and unlock existing client data to deliver a heightened level of decision-making and portfolio transparency.

Carl Farrell, president of Altus Group

Carl Farrell, President at Altus Group said: “The commercial real estate industry is challenged with how to get more from their data and create a more direct line of sight from investments and investors to results and returns.

“Taking Argus to the cloud provides our customers with greater insights, flexibility and investment visibility through more extensive collaboration and better utilisation of their data.”

ARGUS Enterprise was previously available as ‘on premise’ software. Customers would buy the software and host it with the data they generate on their own servers.

In addition to buying the software, customers would pay an annual maintenance fee to Altus Group, covering ongoing updates and support. As a result, customers needed capacity on their server and in-house IT support to manage the software.

Using the cloud, customers no longer need server capacity, and more of the management can be done by Altus Group.

New functionality and applications include:

• Cloud-only deployment enables users to update to the latest version while delivering the benefits and flexibility of a cloud-based environment and reducing related IT infrastructure costs
• Users can benchmark assumptions, compare multiple scenarios, view KPIs and slice and dice their portfolios to find instant insights with portfolio-level dashboards. Future functionality will enable benchmarking with third-party data and select aggregated peer data
• Integration with ARGUS Taliance and ARGUS Voyanta provides the ability to aggregate all investments, structures, assets and data into a single solution reducing complexity and resulting in unified end-to-end asset and investment management
• ARGUS now supports specific valuation methods widely used in German and French markets

Earlier this year at FUTURE: PropTech, PlaceTech caught up with Bob Courteau, CEO of Altus Group, to talk about the firm’s key priorities for this year, how its adapting as more competitors come in to the space and what he thinks the industry will look like in 10 years’ time.