SevOne’s IPO Plans

According to a Gartner report released last year, total software revenues from worldwide IT operations management (ITOM) grew 8.7% in 2011 to $18.3 billion. The market is dominated by five vendors – IBM, CA Technologies, BMC Software, Microsoft, and HP – which together account for 53.5% of the market share. Other smaller players are coming onto the field.

SevOne’s Financials
Wilmington, Delaware–based SevOne was founded in 2005 and has since become one of fastest-growing private companies in its field. SevOne is an IT management organization that uses peer-to-peer (P2P) technology to help customers manage IT infrastructure.

SevOne performance management solutions to IT organizations of teams that help these team monitor, troubleshoot, and manage IT networks, servers, and applications on a real-time basis. The Performance Appliance Solution is a scalable solution that lets organizations manage as many as 60,000 unique devices at a time. These “all-in-one” integrated products can be scaled easily, but without compromising on speed or value. It can help IT organizations manage vast amounts of data and elements on its network. SevOne’s tools are best known for their simplicity. Instead of requiring a dedicated deployment team, these tools can be set up within 15 minutes, and the devices can be integrated for monitoring in real time through a web interface.

According to the CEO, Mike Phelan, as of last year, there were seven billion elements such as network interfaces, response-time measurements, laptops, PCs, and disk drives, across the market that needed monitoring. That number is projected to grow to 20 billion by the year 2020. SevOne sees this explosive growth as a market opportunity. It earns revenues by charging customers a price per element managed by its tools. Analysts estimate SevOne charges customers $5 per element, thus giving them the ability to manage and project their own costs.

SevOne’s financials are not disclosed, but according to management it has witnessed more than 100% growth year on year in terms of bookings. The 141-employee organization earns an estimated $30 million annual revenues. Further, revenues have doubled year on year over the last four years. In the recently released Deloitte 2012 Technology Fast 500 rankings, SevOne was ranked the 75th fastest growing company in North America. It claims to be running a profitable organization that has not needed much external funding until recently.

To date, SevOne has been largely bootstrapped. It received an initial $3.5 million funding from Osage Ventures. Earlier this month, it raised an additional $150 million from Bain Capital to fuel growth. The valuation for the recent funding was not disclosed.

SevOne will not come out with an IPO this year but wants to become a public player in the years to come. Analysts believe that SevOne will either be sold off to players like IBM, BMC, or CA, or it will manage to raise its own IPO in the next three years.

SevOne’s Expansion Plans
Up until now, SevOne has focused primarily on large enterprises. The client list includes names like Thomson Reuters and Comcast. But with the new funding, SevOne will focus on the mid-sized organizations as well. It plans to invest in sales team and in product development so that its offerings can remain viable for these new customers. Once SevOne hits the mid-sized market, it should be able to offer tough competition to the bigger players.