Private equity investor Thoma Bravo has announced that it will acquire a majority interest in IdAM provider Centrify.
Financial details of the deal, which is expected to close in Q3 2018, were not disclosed. However, it is known that since its foundation in 2004, Centrify has received at least $94 million in investment, the most recent being a Series E round in 2014.
This is another major milestone in our journey, and we have no intention of taking our foot off the pedal.
– Tom Kemp, CEO and co-founder, Centrify
The company currently serves over five thousand public and private sector customers, including blue-chip Global 2000s, and spanning a range of industries including defence, finance, energy, retail, manufacturing and healthcare.
“Centrify has seen tremendous growth, and joining with an experienced partner like Thoma Bravo not only ensures we take advantage of existing market opportunities, but also positions us to continue to lead in this growing industry,” said Tom Kemp, CEO and co-founder of Centrify. “With Thoma Bravo’s extensive sector experience and insight in the enterprise security software space, Centrify is in a strong position to provide our products, services, and unique expertise to meet the rising need for identity-based cybersecurity technology in today’s global environment.”
In a blog post, Kemp emphasised that the company “did not make this move out of necessity”, having recently closed a successful fiscal year, in which the final quarter’s bookings exceeded any other quarter to date. Rather, the move is “a strategic next step” for the company.
We’ve known and watched Centrify as a leader for many years, and we absolutely share the company’s vision on where the market is headed.
-A.J. Rohde, Partner, Thoma Bravo
Thoma Bravo has an established record of investing in cybersecurity, with past investments including Blue Coat Systems, Bomgar, SonicWall, SailPoint, Barracuda Networks and SolarWinds, among others. This acquisition is the second in just over a month – back in June it acquired a majority interest in SIEM provider LogRhythm.
“Having invested successfully several times in the identity market, we’ve known and watched Centrify as a leader for many years, and we absolutely share the company’s vision on where the market is headed,” said A.J. Rohde, a partner at Thoma Bravo. “We are unbelievably excited to partner with Tom Kemp and his world-class team to continue to disrupt and expand the identity market organically and through M&A, all while partnering with the team to help institute our best-in-class processes.”
The market for identity and access management solutions is growing quickly, particularly with the increasing demands of regulatory compliance, and Thoma Bravo’s acquisition is a reflection of that.
“Centrify is unique in that it offers products across the entire continuum of identity access management through a cutting-edge, natively built cloud platform,” said Carl Press, a principal at Thoma Bravo. “We see opportunities to both strengthen its leadership position within the privileged identity market as well as accelerate its growth in single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA).”
According to Kemp, Centrify is the only company to be a leader in both the Forrester Wave Privileged Identity Management and Identity-As-A-Service reports.
“Centrify becomes an even stronger leader in the Zero Trust ecosystem and is more empowered to help our customers better address the primary attack vector, which is identity,” said Kemp in a blog post. “This is another major milestone in our journey, and we have no intention of taking our foot off the pedal.”
