LANDesk lands a new dashboard with Xtraction acquisition

Contact: Brenon Daly

In its first acquisition in almost a year, LANDesk picks up existing partner Xtraction Solutions in an effort to make data more visible for the systems management vendor’s clients. The two companies have been partners for more than a year, with a handful of joint customers using Xtraction’s dashboards. Although terms weren’t disclosed, we understand that LANDesk paid in the low tens of millions of dollars for Xtraction, which had only a dozen or so employees and no outside funding.

In addition to data visualization (think, ‘BI for IT operations’), the deal is also important because it expands the sources of data that can be represented. Most IT environments are a hodgepodge of technology from various vendors and vintages. Xtraction has 50 connectors built for many of the larger IT management providers, including HP, Microsoft, BMC and ServiceNow. Another area where LANDesk might look to expand Xtraction’s reporting technology is IT security, where dashboards are increasingly being used to help make sense of the streams of reports about the ever-expanding number of vulnerabilities faced by businesses.

Xtraction is the sixth purchase LANDesk has made since private equity firm Thoma Bravo carved out the systems management vendor from Emerson Electric five years ago. Since then, according to our understanding, LANDesk has added about $100m to its top line while nearly tripling its cash flow. The company says it has plenty of cash in treasury – not to mention a deep-pocketed owner in Thoma Bravo – to continue to add pieces to its IT management platform.

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