Likewise Software Moves Towards High-Growth Storage Market, Raises Capital Through Asset Sale to BeyondTrust

Likewise Software, Inc. has announced that it is pumping in more investment for its storage software business. The company will be raising the required capital through the sale or its Active Directory Bridge business unit, which includes its Likewise Open and Likewise Enterprise software products, to BeyondTrust. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed as yet.

In a release, Barry Crist, CEO of Likewise Software said that, “The storage software business has seen the highest growth and has been the most strategic part of our business. We’re doubling down on our commitment to building out our next-generation storage platform. This sale brings additional capital, allowing us to invest more heavily in our storage direction.”

Crist further added that, “Over the past years, we’ve worked with some of the largest names in the storage industry and they have asked us to apply our expertise and leadership in the identity business toward addressing the challenge of providing secure, cross-platform storage across physical, virtual and cloud environments.”

Likewise offers low-cost, NAS-enabled storage and reliable and secure access to data through cross-platform support on Linux of the CIFS/SMB and NFS protocols. Additionally Likewise will introduce a new end-user product for the enterprise in the market. The new end-user product has been architected on the Likewise Storage Services platform.

Robin Budd, vice president of Engineering at Likewise commented that, “For years, Likewise has been a leader in helping businesses bridge Linux, Unix and Mac environments to Microsoft (News - Alert) Active Directory. We’re confident BeyondTrust will continue to build upon the success of Likewise Open and Likewise Enterprise. The BeyondTrust family of products are now the most comprehensive suite of identity and privileged access management products on the market.”

BeyondTrust will benefit from the acquisition of Active Directory Bridge business unit as it effectively expands their suite from ‘inside perimeter’ privilege delegation, monitoring and auditing solutions to further include capabilities such as authentication and auditing management for cloud environments.

Jim Zierick, executive vice president of Products at BeyondTrust explained that, “When evaluating the most efficient way to this market, we were struck not just by Likewise’s expertise and advanced technology, we were particularly interested in their open source business model,” said. “Likewise Open offers not just a path to sales, but a true mechanism for advancing the technology and providing a free, valuable resource to the industry. We look forward to maximizing our community involvement and offering the most extensive suite of authentication engines in the industry.”

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