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Vista Equity Partners Acquires Autotask

Autotask Corp., one of the most significant vendors for managed services providers, is being acquired by a private equity firm.

Vista Equity Partners is buying Autotask for an undisclosed sum. Vista's $11.5-billion portfolio includes Aptean, Websense and at least 20 vertically focused technology companies. The announcement came Monday during Autotask's Community Live! show in Miami.

Mark Cattini, president and CEO of Autotask, says the investment will allow the company to more aggressively improve Autotask's solutions for customers. "We are devoted to our clients' ongoing success and are confident that our partnership with Vista will drive innovation and growth and delivery dynamic solutions as the traditional IT landscape evolves," Cattini said in a statement.

The statement seems to leave room for Autotask to branch out from its origins in professional services automation (PSA) to a potentially broader mission as management of IT solutions increasingly moves to the cloud and other boundary lines blur.

At the same time, the firm's new private equity ownership indicated that Autotask's focus on IT service providers as core customers would continue. Alan Cline, principal at Vista Equity Partners, vowed in a statement to "work with the Autotask team to expand and enhance the company's solutions to help IT service providers more efficiently and effectively meet their clients' changing needs."

The private equity move on the PSA side comes after a wave of investment and consolidation in the adjacent market space of remote monitoring and management (RMM). Changes on that side got rolling with a growth equity firm backing the 2011 spinoff of what eventually became Continuum from Zenith Infotech, followed by 2013's private equity-funded acquisition and internal development spree at Kaseya, along with new owners for N-Able Technologies (SolarWinds) and Level Platforms Inc. (AVG Technologies).

Posted by Scott Bekker on June 09, 2014


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