SoftwareONE, a software-licensing solutions provider with significant operations in Canada, has entered into a partnership with private equity firm KKR.
Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
The Manhattan-based KKR is led by co-CEOs Henry Kravis and George Roberts. Kravis and Roberts came to fame in 1988 for the highly publicized RJR Nabisco leveraged buyout, which at the time set a record at more than $31 billion.
The partnership with the Stans, Swiss.-based SoftwareONE will see KKR provide growth capital and acquire a 25 per cent minority stake the channel company. The other 75 per cent will stay with the four founding partners and existing shareholders of SoftwareONE.
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Earlier this year SoftwareONE and CompuCom agreed to a deal that saw direct market reseller acquire the software licensing business of CompuCom.
CompuCom is based in Dallas but has Canadian headquarters in Mississauga, Ont. Last year CompuCom Canada was the No. 4 ranked solution provider on the CDN Top 100 list with revenues between $400 to $450 million.
SoftwareONE offers software licensing and procurement services, software asset management, technology consulting and cloud services to more than 25,000 customers in 115 countries. The company is a leading channel partner for Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, VMWare, SAP and a further 9,000 software publishers.
Daniel von Stockar, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of SoftwareONE, said the company takes great care in choosing partners and KKR shares the same entrepreneurial philosophy and cultural values.
SoftwareONE CEO Patrick Winter said SoftwareONE will continue to work serving customers and supporting software vendor partners all around the world.
“The software industry is changing, and together with KKR, we see a unique opportunity to capitalize on those changes and continue to increase the value we bring to our customers, in particular in the areas of cloud and value‐added services,” Winter said.
SoftwareONE is not KKR’s only technology company or solution provider in its portfolio. KKR has its hands in First Data Corp., Go Daddy, Panasonic, Haier, Sonos, and Sungard. KKR has a similar relationship with U.K. solution provider NorthGate Information Solutions.
Jean‐Pierre Saad, Director in KKR’s Private Equity Technology team in Europe, said proliferation of software applications, growth in cloud adoption and increasing complexity of enterprise IT environments is the new reality within corporate IT departments. As experts in all stages of the software lifecycle, SoftwareONE is uniquely positioned to benefit from those trends and continue to offer innovative solutions to address its customers’ needs.
The transaction is subject to customary approvals and is expected to close in fall 2015.
SoftwareONE entered the Canadian market more than two years ago and is based in Mississauga, Ont.