Two current monetary transactions price billions — each involving non-public fairness agency Thoma Bravo — have highlighted the continued and powerful curiosity amongst traders and different expertise distributors within the id and entry administration (IAM) market.
Thoma Bravo final week accomplished its beforehand introduced buy of id safety companies supplier SailPoint Applied sciences in an all-cash transaction valued at round $6.9 billion. At completion of buy, the corporate was delisted from the New York Inventory Change and stockholders had been entitled to obtain $65.25 in money per share of the corporate’s frequent inventory. SailPoint is now a privately held entity.
Earlier this month, Thoma Bravo additionally introduced its intention to purchase federated ID administration agency Ping Identification for $2.8 billion. That transaction is predicted to shut within the fourth quarter. At the moment, Ping, too, will go from being a publicly listed firm to a non-public entity beneath the Thoma Bravo umbrella. Ping’s present stockholders will obtain $28.50 in money per share of frequent inventory.
Substantial Premiums
Thoma Bravo paid a considerable premium for each companies. The $65.25 per share of frequent inventory that it supplied for SailPoint when it first introduced plans to amass the agency in April represented a greater than 31% premium on SailPoint’s share worth on the time. Equally, Thoma Bravo’s supply for Ping Identification represented a premium of greater than 63% of the id vendor’s closing share worth on the time of the supply in early August.
The premiums replicate the rising worth that traders and different expertise companies have begun attaching to IAM companies over the previous two years. A lot of it’s being pushed by the conclusion that corporations transferring to the cloud and supporting extra distributed workforces additionally require new approaches to IAM.
Cloud Migration Driving IAM Demand
“Identification is core to digital transformation,” says Richard Stiennon, chief analysis analyst at IT-Harvest. “Enterprises are trying intently at id as a result of they’re transferring to a zero-trust strategy as they transition to the cloud.”
Stiennon says that as enterprises transfer to the cloud, there is a chance for them to consolidate their IAM platforms. New and easier methods to deal with identities and authentication have turn into obtainable which give enterprise organizations a method to consolidate their id infrastructures within the cloud, he says.
Accelerated cloud adoption can also be giving identity-security distributors a window of alternative to broaden their footprint in a market that Microsoft has dominated since introducing Lively Listing greater than twenty years in the past, Stiennon notes.
“Thoma Bravo is making opportunistic strikes,” he says, including {that a} current and normal decline in cybersecurity inventory valuations has created a fantastic shopping for alternative for the corporate.
“It raised a $22.8 billion fund two years in the past, and it’s placing that capital to work” by way of strategic investments like these involving SailPoint and Ping, he says.
Close to Doubling of Market Measurement in Subsequent 5 Years
MarketsandMarkets has estimated that international demand for IAM applied sciences will develop from round $13.4 billion in 2022 to some $25.6 billion by 2027. The market analysis agency has recognized a number of components as driving this development together with the aforementioned proliferation of cloud-based IAM applied sciences and companies, speedy adoption of hybrid cloud fashions, and an total enhance in cybersecurity spending post-COVID-19.
Others, comparable to Jupiter Analysis, have estimated related development. The analyst agency has predicted that the IAM market will high $26 billion in 2027, pushed largely by purchases by small companies that hitherto haven’t made massive investments in IAM platforms. The rising proliferation of comparatively cheap software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud subscription companies for id administration is making it doable for this section to make these new investments, the analysis agency stated.
Thoma Bravo’s newest acquisitions add to the speedy rising portfolio of cybersecurity distributors that the non-public fairness agency now owns. Different main acquisitions in the previous couple of years embody Proofpoint, McAfee, LogRhythm, Imperva, Sophos, and Veracode.
Nevertheless, the corporate is only one of a number of which have snapped up IAM distributors simply this yr alone. Examples of others who’ve made related investments embody Vectra AI’s buy of id safety and cloud posture administration vendor Siriux Safety Applied sciences in January; SentinelOne’s March buy of Attivo Networks for $616 million in money; and Avast’s buy of SecureKey for an undisclosed sum in April.
Stiennon says there has additionally been substantial funding exercise within the IAM house. To date this yr, there was a complete of $1.4 billion invested in 18 id distributors, he says.
“Final yr noticed $2.8 billion in 44 corporations, and 2020 noticed $2.6 billion in 48 distributors. I count on the tempo of investments in IAM to proceed at present ranges or enhance over the following two years,” he says. Stiennon estimates there are some 400 distributors within the id house total at the moment. Forty of them have greater than 400 workers.
