LANDesk to Merge With Clearlake Capital's Heat Software

**Editor’s Note: Please click here for a recap of the biggest channel-impacting mergers in September-October 2016.**

LANDesk is being acquired by private investment firm Clearlake Capital Group, which will merge the cybersecurity company with Heat Software.

LANDesk, being sold by Thoma Bravo – another private-equity firm – provides systems management, security management, service management, asset management, and process management services to organizations. Heat provides cloud-service management and unified endpoint management software services.

Steve Daly, LANDesk’s CEO, tells Channel Partners the acquisition will provide new opportunities for partners of both his company and Heat Software.

“LANDesk partners will soon be able to leverage Heat’s cloud-based service management (CSM) and unified endpoint management (UEM) software solutions as part of their offerings,” he said. “Combined with LANDesk’s UEM, endpoint security and service management platform, this expanded product portfolio will allow LANDesk channel partners to provide stronger cloud offerings.”

Heat partners soon will have access to an improved IT asset management portfolio from LANDesk for complete life-cycle management, Daly said.

“In addition, they will be able to offer an expanded security product portfolio that combines advanced privilege management and whitelisting functionality with a combination of patching solutions,” he said. “It will also offer new desktop virtualization and user environment management capabilities to Heat partners, as well as sophisticated reporting and dashboards through the LANDesk Xtraction solution.”{ad}

The transaction is expected to close this month. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

The combined organization will include more than 1,600 employees in 23 countries serving more than 22,000 diversified customers across industries, and managing and securing more than 40 million endpoints.

The company will be led by Daly and will be based in Salt Lake City. John Ferron, a Clearlake operating advisor and Heat’s current CEO, will serve as executive chairman of the company’s board of directors. The combined company will operate under a new corporate name, which will be announced at a later date.

Both LANDesk and Heat have partner programs and “before any decisions are made regarding the future of these programs, Heat and LANDesk teams will be coordinating, planning and formalizing alignment on all strategic decisions related to the combined, overall partner strategy,” Daly said.

“We’ve been impressed with LANDesk’s vision, and its ability to build shareholder value through consistent organic and inorganic growth initiatives,” said Behdad Eghbali, a co-founder and managing partner at Clearlake. “Together, LANDesk and Heat are well-positioned to deliver market-leading solutions that continue to expand their security and cloud offerings and accelerate growth.”

Clearlake currently has more than $3 billion of assets under management and its senior investment principals have led or co-led more than 90 investments in traditional buyouts, corporate carve-outs, recapitalizations, turnarounds and restructurings, structured equity and credit, and other special situations, as well as public equity and secondary debt.