Real estate professional services company JLL announced that it has closed on its acquisition of Boston-based Building Engines, a building operations platform, the former said in a release.
JLL acquired Building Engines for a cash purchase price of approximately $300 million.
Building Engines’ cloud platform serves as a system that “unites all the technology and applications” used to run buildings in one place, simplifying interactions between building tenants, management and staff, according to JLL.
“Our vision is to unite the fragmented property management software ecosystem and make Building Engines the building operations system of record,” said Sharad Rastogi, president of JLLT. “With this acquisition, we see a major opportunity to bring the property management software ecosystem together in one easy-to-use, open platform for real estate investors.”
Building Engines already serves more than 1,000 customers across 35,000 buildings, including many JLL customers, who will now benefit from tighter alignment between the two companies, the firm said.
JLL also intends to leverage Building Engines’ open API infrastructure to integrate the platform more broadly with the greater real estate ecosystem, including the product portfolio developed by JLL Technologies (JLLT), its division that builds and invests in technology, and products it invests in through venture arm JLL Spark.
“At Building Engines, our goal is to create an amazing experience in every building worldwide,” said Building Engines CEO Tim Curran. “So, joining JLLT, the leading technology team in commercial real estate was a natural next step. By tapping into the scale of a global firm like JLL, we can accelerate expansion of our cloud platform that meets the complete needs of property managers and investors.”
Building Engines will retain its name and continue to serve existing customers, JLL said.
Earlier this year, JLL announced the release of JLL Azara, which is a corporate real estate data and insights platform.
The new platform was developed by JLL Technologies (JLLT), a business division of JLL that is dedicated to commercial real estate (CRE) technology.
JLL Azara supports the “complete real estate lifecycle” across three categories: Portfolio optimization, facilities and operations, and space and workplace management. In the future, JLL Azara will expand to cover additional categories such as energy measurement and management.
The company also noted that all relevant real estate systems, including ERP, IWMS, IoT and CRE applications, can integrate into the new platform.
