Yardi Systems acquires 2 Realm product lines

Real Estate Weekly, May 7, 2003

Yardi Systems, Inc. and The Realm Business Solutions, Inc. announced that Yardi has acquired the operations of two Realm product lines, BJ Murray and NewStar Enterprise. Yardi has retained all employees in the New York and Toronto offices affected by the acquisitions.

"We look forward to meeting the BJ Murray and NewStar clientele," said Anant Yardi, founder and president of Yardi Systems. "Their loyalty and support over the years is a testament to the experience and dedication of our newest employees. Yardi's commitment to customer satisfaction, together with employee continuity, ensures an orderly and uninterrupted transition of support and services to our new customers."

"We see this transition as an important and positive step, not just for The Realm and Yardi, but also for the users of BJ Murray and NewStar Enterprise," said Don MacKinnon, president and CEO of The Realm. "Like Realm, Yardi is recognized for the excellent customer support and service that they provide to what has become the largest PM user community in the industry. More importantly, this transition provides users of BJ Murray and NewStar with market knowledge and product direction from a proven, experienced leader in mid-tier property management"

The companies also announced that they have entered into a strategic business alliance. The business alliance establishes that the two companies will work together to develop and support data integration standards, including reXML, between their respective applications.

The first of their co-sponsored applications is Realm's CONNECT product, which enables data transfer between Yardi Enterprise(tm) and Yardi Voyager(tm) Property Management programs with Realm's asset valuation tool, ARGUS. Yardi and Realm will also jointly market and promote certain Realm products to Yardi clients, including Realm's COLLECT and PAY that automate rent collection (i.e. checks, ACH and credit cards) and invoice processing.

"By reducing the time and effort required to share data across applications," noted Yardi, "operational performance is improved throughout the organization. This strategic alliance ensures that the data integration is tested, supported and extremely effective, now and as our products grow."

"This agreement is a true milestone for the real estate technology industry," commented MacKinnon. "Never before have two market leaders of this size worked together to establish data transfer standards between product lines. The true winners from this relationship will be our customers, which together represent more than 20,000 leading real estate organizations."