Private equity firm TPG Capital has acquired privileged access management (PAM) software company Centrify from Thoma Bravo. Moreover, Symantec enterprise business veteran Art Gilliland will join Centrify as CEO when the deal closes. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
This is M&A deal number 75 that MSSP Alert and sister site ChannelE2E have covered so far in 2021. See all technology M&A deals for 2021 and 2020 listed here.
Thoma Bravo has owned Centrify since 2018. By mid-2020, Centrify introduced Delegated Machine Credentials (DMC) to "reduce risk and empower automation in increasingly complex, infrastructure-as-code-based elastic environments," the company said at the time.
Centrify MSSP Partner Program Details
Centrify's partner program focus areas span channel partners, technology partners, OEM partners and MSSPs. The MSSP offering includes a multi-tenant platform approach from StarLink (a distributor). Licenses are sold as a one-year commitment with a monthly business option.
Still, Centrify hasn't made any major moves to promote the MSSP partner initiatives in recent years, according to MSSP Alert's daily coverage of the industry.
On the enterprise front, over half of all Fortune 100 companies leverage Centrify's identity-centric PAM platform for secure access services, the company says.
TPG Capital Acquires Centrify: Executive and Private Equity Perspectives
In a prepared statement about the deal, Gilliland said:
“Every organization today is investing in its own digital armor, and its ability to secure privileged access to critical systems and infrastructure is essential to that defense. Many of the largest and most security-conscious organizations in the world trust Centrify’s industry-leading PAM technology to guard their most important accounts. It’s an honor to be joining the company at such an exciting time in its history, and I look forward to working with the team and our new partners at TPG to advance Centrify’s leadership in privileged identity and access management solutions."
Added Tim Millikin, partner at TPG Capital:
“As a result of the many accelerating IT trends – including faster digital transformation, accelerated cloud adoption, and agile DevOps practices – enterprises need to manage and protect more privileged accounts than ever before. We believe PAM is one of the most important and strategic sub-sectors of security software, and Centrify is a clear market leader in this space – serving more than half of the Fortune 100. We want to thank Flint for all he has done to position the company for ongoing success and look forward to building on this strong momentum in partnership with Art and the rest of the Centrify management team.”
Concluded A.J. Rohde, a senior partner at Thoma Bravo:
“We are so proud of what we accomplished in partnership with Flint and the management team at Centrify. We realized our vision of establishing Centrify as a standalone operating company and aggressively invested in our vision of making the company the premier PAM solution for cloud and hybrid environments, anchored by the largest enterprises and governments in the world. This investment exemplifies Thoma Bravo’s operating philosophy, and we are thrilled to pass the reins to TPG.”
TPG Capital has extensive experience in the cybersecurity, enterprise software and MSP software markets. Key investments have included GuardiCore, Kaseya and Zscaler.
