To know whether the investment made profits or losses, value analysis is done on the asset or the project. In the current time, value analysis is critical for business managers and an enterprise. This makes the enterprise owner able to negotiate the price of the assets or items when conducting commercial transactions. Since the US is the largest tech and software market globally, this article classifies the various methods used to do value analysis for modern software investment in the US. Therefore, the method is evaluated and presented according to the Model-Driven Interoperability theory, which includes cost, income, and intellectual capital markets to measure the value of software. The main importance of this research paper is to clarify the reason for the need to introduce proper investment valuation models in software. The research methodology is based on the inferences of the methods of software valuation, while the attention is based on various historical existing literature and practical examples. This study demonstrates the different aspects of current valuation methods to determine software value. Analysing the existing literature shows various valuation models under the income, market, cost, real option and cost-benefit analysis approaches used to value the software. Furthermore, this research recognised various methods that can be relied upon to estimate the value of software. Some of them include direct assessment for the future income, which estimates the income of a given software, real option valuation, which depends on the opportunity of software to generate income in future. Moreover, the relief from royalty method estimates the value of software based on hypothetical royalty payment that the company saves. The suggested methods in this paper would help business managers uncover the value of modern software and better decision-making when acquiring or developing software.
Keywords: Investment, Methods, Software, Valuation
