Samanage

Samanage carved a niche in the enterprise service and IT asset management sector before its strategic acquisition by SolarWinds in April 2019 for approximately $350 million. Founded in 2007 by veteran entrepreneur Doron Gordon, the company was established to provide a cloud-native platform for managing information systems. Gordon, who previously co-founded companies like Continuity Software and Always-On Software, brought extensive experience from the IT management software space, including a role at BMC Software, to his leadership at Samanage.

The firm operated on a multi-tenant, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, generating revenue through subscriptions to its IT Service Management (ITSM) platform. This platform catered to a broad market, from small and mid-sized businesses to large enterprises, aiming to simplify and automate IT and employee service requests. By the time of its acquisition, Samanage served over 1,800 customers across more than 50 countries. The company's product was a comprehensive, ITIL-ready service desk that included a self-service portal, service catalog, knowledge base, and service level agreement (SLA) management tools. A key feature was its unified IT service desk and asset management capabilities, allowing organizations to track and control their hardware and software inventory, ensure software compliance, and manage service delivery from a single system. The platform's REST API also enabled integration with hundreds of other applications.

Samanage's journey involved several significant funding rounds, including a $16 million Series B in 2015, a $20 million Series C in 2017, and a $30 million Series D in late 2018, with investors like Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, Salesforce Ventures, and Carmel Ventures. The acquisition by SolarWinds marked a significant milestone, leading to the rebranding of the Samanage platform as SolarWinds Service Desk. This move was intended to bolster SolarWinds' IT Operations Management portfolio with a proven SaaS-based ITSM solution, competing with other major players in the market. The former Samanage team and technology formed the basis of SolarWinds' first development center in Israel.

Keywords: IT service management, ITSM, asset management, service desk, SaaS, cloud-based, SolarWinds, ITIL, enterprise service, help desk