Since 1995, Perforce Software has been developing developer tools, which is a long period in the technology sector. Clearlake Capital bought the firm in 2018, and it has been upgrading and growing its reach through acquisitions over the previous few years. The business revealed today that it plans to buy Puppet, an infrastructure automation startup. The specifics of the arrangement were not disclosed by the firms.
According to Tim Russell, CPO at Perforce, the purchase provides a missing component to the company’s toolbox. “Perforce is a DevOps market leader, but it focuses on the planning through verification phases of DevOps, such as planned creation and testing. As a result, we consider this purchase as a great fit since it allows us to get into operations,” he added.
He went on to say that one of the reasons they pursued Puppet was because the firm had a long history of supporting a comparable group of clients. When Perforce came knocking, Puppet CEO Yvonne Wassenaar says she was seeking for money to drive some inorganic expansion through acquisitions. “Fundamentally, the market is shifting so quickly,” she explained. “Despite the fact that I’m really proud of the organic development aspect of [our goods], I didn’t believe we were moving fast enough organically to actually stay up with what our consumers required.”
“Actually, I set out to acquire money to assist Puppet undertake inorganic acquisition on our own.” And it was during that procedure that I met the Perforce staff… “The more we talked, the clearer it became that by joining forces with them, I could achieve all of the things I needed in terms of having access to cash to actually build the Puppet portfolio itself.” She didn’t have to sell, but she believed she could do so much more as part of a well-capitalized company like Perforce, which is backed by Clearlake Capital and Francisco Partners.
The aim is that under the Perforce umbrella, the company’s success with open source and commercial clients will continue, and that it will be able to grow that base with some strategic acquisitions of its own. Perforce will continue to let Puppet do what it’s done for years while looking for ways to incorporate it into Perforce’s wider platform when appropriate. Since its inception in 2009, Puppet has raised about $190 million. In 2020, the company received a $40 million debt round from Black Rock.
