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Private Equity Continues to Redraw MSP Software Industry Map

The Kaseya and Unitrends merger, announced this morning, is the latest M&A deal with private equity ownership working behind the scenes. Over the past few years, private equity investments have redrawn the MSP software industry map multiple times. Today, that map increasingly extends into midmarket enterprise IT departments...

It wasn't always like this. The MSP software market was once a renegade industry that largely lived outside of the Wall Street and PE spotlight. That began to change when ConnectWise launched an investment fund in 2010 and began piecing together MSP-centric software assets.

Not long after, private equity firms began to discover the sector -- especially as cloud services caught on. While venture capitalists pumped money into high-valuation cloud startups, private equity firms pumped money into the growing MSP software sector, assuming the recurring revenue model (so similar to the cloud sector) would deliver solid returns.

MSP Software Industry: Private Equity, M&A Investment Timeline

The overall timeline looks something like this...

Stay tuned: This blog, featuring deeper analysis, will be updated throughout Thursday.

Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri is co-founder & editorial director of MSSP Alert and ChannelE2E, the two leading news & analysis sites for managed service providers in the cybersecurity market.