ITSM App Developer Cherwell Software Receives $172M In Financing From KKR

Cherwell will use the financing to accelerate its global expansion and market its software for digital transformation and other service management tasks.

Cherwell Software, a developer of enterprise IT service management applications, has snagged $172 million in venture financing from private equity firm KKR & Co., the companies said Wednesday.

KKR, which invested $50 million in Cherwell in February 2017, is acquiring a bigger stake in the Colorado Springs, Colo.-based company through its Next Generation Technology Fund.

Cherwell, founded in 2004, develops a number of IT service management applications, a category of software that Gartner defines as tools that enable IT operations organizations, including infrastructure and operations managers, to better support production environments by facilitating the tasks and workflows associated with the management and delivery of IT services.

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The vendor's product portfolio includes IT service desk and ITIL (information technology information library) process management software, a configuration management database, and tools for change, incident and problem management.

Cherwell, in a statement announcing the investment, said its customers include businesses, government agencies, schools and hospitals that use its software to manage their IT operations and, more recently, manage digital transformation initiatives.

"Since founding this company in 2004, we have committed to serving customers with intuitive technology that helps not only drive business but transform organizations," said Vance Brown, Cherwell co-founder and executive chairman, in the statement. "The demand for our platform has continued to expand globally and the leadership at KKR is aligned with the company's vision for growth."

Cherwell has been expanding globally, recently gaining new customers in the EMEA and Asia/Pacific regions. Some of the new funding will go toward continuing that expansion.

The company also has been expanding into the broader services management market, taking its technology beyond IT management to cover project management, facilities and security. The funding announcement cited a MarketsandMarkets report that said the broader service management market could reach $30 billion by 2020.

Under its service partner program Cherwell works with more than 60 solution provider and service partners including Avante Solutions, CompuCom, SHI and Syntel.

The company also runs a technology alliance program through which it works with Cisco, Microsoft, VMware and other major IT vendors. In February the company launched a service management system that integrates its ITSM platform with Cisco's Application Centric Infrastructure.

Cherwell is currently searching for a new CEO. In January Craig Harper, who had been CEO since September 2016, left the company to pursue other ventures. He joined the company in 2014 as head of sales.

Before KKR’s $50 million investment last year, Cherwell had raised $8.2 million from other investors in 2016 and investments of undisclosed amounts in 2015 and 2012, according to the Crunchbase website.