Quest Software, a global cybersecurity, data intelligence, and IT operations management software provider, has signed a definitive agreement with Clearlake Capital Group, L.P. (together with certain of its affiliates, “Clearlake”) to acquire the company from Francisco Partners.
Patrick Nichols, current CEO of Quest, will continue to lead the company, supported by the existing executive management team.
Upon closing of the transaction, Clearlake, an investment firm founded in 2006 operating integrated businesses across private equity, credit, and other related strategies, will become the majority shareholder in Quest. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
"IT teams worldwide rely on Quest to help them solve critical challenges that enable business growth and address crucial strategic initiatives. Quest has evolved to become a market leader in identity-centric cybersecurity, data intelligence, and IT operations management and I want to thank Francisco Partners for helping Quest realize this vision,” said Nichols. “Our new partnership with Clearlake will accelerate Quest's momentum as a leader and innovator as we increase our investment pace in our core product roadmaps, cloud/SaaS offerings, and global presence. We will continue to expand our customer base as computing environments and related management, modernization, and security challenges, become more complex.”
Founded in 1987, Quest Software has built a reputation over 3 decades as a critical software solution provider for security-sensitive customers and a leader of innovation addressing rapidly evolving risks and security threats. Quest enables today's edgeless IT ecosystem—across people, applications, and data to endpoints?allowing customers to maintain controls, mitigate and contain security threats proactively, and maintain operational up-time while decreasing costs.
“We have long admired Quest as a leading identity-centric cybersecurity, data intelligence, and IT operations management software platform and the company’s software solutions that help secure enterprise IT environments,” said Behdad Eghbali, co-founder and managing partner at Clearlake. “We are excited to partner with Patrick and Carolyn McCarthy, Quest’s CFO, to utilize Clearlake’s O.P.S. framework to help the company strengthen its strategic growth plans including best practices to accelerate cloud/SaaS adoption and support its buy-and-build strategy.”
The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022, pending customary regulatory approvals and closing conditions
For more information, visit www.quest.com and www.clearlake.com.