The workers at Salt Lake City-based LANDesk Software Inc. can expect a lot of changes going into 2017. Clearlake Capital Group L.P., a private equity firm with about $3 billion in assets under management, today acquired the IT management provider from Thoma Bravo LLC.

The Wall Street Journal cited anonymous insiders as saying that the deal is worth more than $1.1 billion. It’s the latest in a long series of ownership changes for LANDesk that traces back to 1991, the year Linux was born, when Intel Corp. picked up its suite of desktop administration software.

The firm has since expanded its focus beyond workstations to helping companies manage employee-owned mobile devices, data center infrastructure and almost everything in between. It also sells a number of security tools designed to help clients protect all those assets from hacking. Clearlake plans to bolster the product lineup even further in the wake of today’s deal by merging LANDesk with its Heat Software Inc. subsidiary.

The latter firm is itself the product of two acquisitions, FrontRange Solutions Inc. and Lumension Security, that were joined together in 2015. Heat’s portfolio includes a similar mix of hardware management and security tools as LANDesk that Clearlake hopes will round out its value proposition.

In addition to a broadened product lineup, the combined firm will also employ some 1,600 people and claims 22,000 clients, with a total of 40 million “endpoints” under management. Moreover, the company is set to receive a new name after the merger’s expected completion later this month. The insiders who spoke with WSJ added that its annual earnings will be about $180 million earnings before interest, taxes and other charges.

On a more strategic level, the merger of LANDesk with Heat should make it possible to achieve the “operational efficiencies” that are typically realized when two firms in the same field join forces. Such savings could in turn could free up resources for product development with the aim of making the combined company more competitive on the long run.

As for Thoma Bravo, today’s sale represents the culmination of a more than six-year effort to realize a return on LANDesk. The private equity firm bought the company in 2010 at a time when annual revenue growth was in the low single digits and invested heavily to regain momentum. Along the way, it has made several other big bets, including the $3 billion acquisition of data visualization provider Qlik Inc last June.

Image courtesy of LANDesk