Cybersecurity Software Firm Quest to be Acquired by Clearlake

An investment firm that’s active in technology will buy Quest, the cybersecurity, data intelligence, and IT operations management software provider. Clearlake Capital Group is buying Quest from Francisco Partners, another investment firm. Clearlake isn’t saying how much it’s paying for the acquisition, but the Wall Street Journal reported it as $5.4 billion.

Quest’s Patrick Nichols

Patrick Nichols, CEO of Quest, will continue to lead the company supported by the existing executive management team.

“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 road maps, 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,” he said.

Behdad Eghbali is co-founder and managing partner at Clearlake, a firm not new to acquiring large software companies.

Clearlake’s Behdad Eghbali

“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,” Eghbali said.

This includes best practices to accelerate cloud/SaaS adoption and support its buy-and-build strategy.

Quest History

Founded in 1987, Quest Software has built a reputation over 30 years as a software provider for security-sensitive customers. In addition, Quest enables what it calls an “edgeless” IT ecosystem. That allows customers to maintain control, mitigate and contain security threats proactively, and sustain operational uptime while decreasing costs.

Globally, the firm says it manages more than 250 million identities and more than 100,000 customers. It also has 15,000 partners and works with 97 of the Fortune 100 to deliver proactive management and monitoring.

Dipanjan Deb is co-founder and CEO of Francisco Partners.

Francisco Partners’ Dipanjan Deb

“We are proud of the tremendous progress Quest has made since re-launching as an independent company, and I want to recognize Patrick Nichols and the management team for strong execution,” Deb said. “[Francisco Partners has] a long and successful track record executing divisional carve-out transactions and are grateful to have had the opportunity to work with the Quest team to create value for the company, its customers and its partners. We wish the Quest organization well in their new partnership with Clearlake.” 

Quest offers an MSP partner program that promises flexible licensing, and low startup and expansion costs. The company expanded its partner program two years ago, offering MSPs additional incentives and opportunities.