Private Equity and IT Management Software: TA Associates Invests In Ivanti -

Private equity firm TA Associates has invested in Ivanti, an IT management and cybersecurity software provider that has pushed hard into bot software and other IT service desk automation capabilities. Financial terms of the investment were not disclosed.

Ivanti was formed in 2017 when private equity firm Clearlake Capital merged LANDESK with HEAT Software. Clearlake remains a prominent investor in Ivanti, which underwent a major executive team overhaul earlier this year.

The TA Associates funding will "enable Ivanti to increase its investment in innovation, accelerate its global growth and continue its acquisition strategy."

Ivanti: Recent IT Automation, Business Milestones

Ivanti's software focuses on three key IT management opportunities:

allow administrators to discover IT assets on-premises, in the cloud and at the edge;

improve IT service delivery; and

reduce risk with insights and automation.

Ivanti's partner program spans expert solution providers (ESPs), managed service providers (MSPs) and national sales providers (NSPs). Key company milestones in recent months include:

Product Leadership: Hiring BMC veteran Nayaki Nayyar as executive vice president (EVP) and chief product officer (CPO).

Sales & Channel Leadership: Promoting Cyrus Hatfield to senior vice president, global sales; hiring LogRhythm veteran Gary Abad as VP of global channels and system integrators; and recruiting Infor veteran Leigh Lebow as senior director of channel marketing.

Research and Development: Unveiling Ivanti Neurons, an automation platform that augments IT teams with automation bots that detect and resolve issues and security vulnerabilities while improving the accuracy, speed and costs of services IT delivers, the company asserts.

And in early 2020, Ivanti announced several executive appointments. Key hires included:

Jim Schaper as CEO, succeeding Steve Daly.

Infor veteran Jeff Abbott as president.

Michael McClellan as EVP and CFO

Infor SVP Mary Trick as EVP and Chief Customer Officer.

Infor VP Angie Gunter as SVP and Chief Marketing Officer.

Infor EVP John Flavin as SVP and GM of the independent business unit, supply chain business unit, and license management.

Re-hiring Mark Chamberlain as SVP of global operations.

TA Associates Invests In Ivanti: Executive Perspectives

Explaining the TA Associates investment, Ivanti CEO Jim Schaper said:

"TA Associates has extensive experience investing in enterprise software companies, and we believe their investment in Ivanti reflects confidence in our growth plans and ongoing expansion. Ivanti continues to experience strong performance even amid today's uncertain environment, and we believe our ability to uniquely address our customers' critical IT needs through intelligent IT management and security software solutions positions us very well for future success. We're excited to continue our partnership with Clearlake and welcome TA to help us accelerate our growth, continue to innovate for our customers and execute on our acquisition strategy."

Added Harry Taylor, a managing director at TA Associates:

"We believe that this is the best time to invest in Ivanti. The company is uniquely positioned at the intersection of the rapidly growing IT service management, unified endpoint management and security end-markets, and has a world-class management team that we're excited to support."

Added Hythem El-Nazer, another managing director at TA Associates.

"Jim Schaper has built a strong and talented management team at Ivanti, and we are thrilled to partner with them alongside Clearlake to build on the company's strong foundation to accelerate growth. We are excited to be investing to help accelerate product innovation and drive strategic acquisitions that strengthen Ivanti's position in the mid-market enterprise ITSM market."

Concluded Behdad Eghbali, founder and managing partner, and Prashant Mehrotra, partner, of Clearlake:

"We're proud to have supported Ivanti's significant growth over the years, most recently driven by the cloud solutions more than doubling organically in the last two years and the rapid scaling of the company's security and enterprise service management solutions. We're thrilled to work hand-in-hand with Harry, Hythem, and the TA team as partners in Ivanti, and we are excited to continue utilizing our O.P.S. framework to support Jim Schaper and the rest of the Ivanti management team as they aggressively grow the company organically and through acquisitions."

The investment is expected to close in the second half of 2020.