Identity security solutions provider Ping Identity has acquired UnboundID, its former partner, for an undisclosed amount. Austin-based UnboundID offers customer identity and access management solutions. The deal is expected to help Ping expand from identity management into customer engagement.
This comes two months after Colorado-based Ping Identity was acquired by Vista Equity Partners for $600 million. That acquisition, Ping noted, provided the resources it needed to accelerate its platform by purchasing UnboundID, a move that “wouldn’t have been possible” prior to being acquired by Vista Equity Partners.
Today’s acquisition gives Ping access to UnboundID’s “impressive list of big enterprise customers,” including global brands such as Chick-fil-A, Wells Fargo, Target, Boeing, Cisco and NBC. Perhaps more importantly, it also gives Ping its own identity-data store. In an interview with TechCrunch, Ping Identity CEO Andre Durand said, “At the end of the day, UnboundID has one of the world’s best customer-facing user directories.” Durand added, “Once we incorporate this into our platform and have capabilities to store user profiles, it allows us to innovate in ways we couldn’t before.”
Additionally, Ping anticipates Unbound will help it accelerate its “directory- and user-management capabilities by providing customer identity and access management across all channels and devices.”
Specifically, Ping mentions that the addition of Unbound’s capability will bolster:
- User experience
- Personalization
- Privacy management
- Partner-identity management
Unbound was founded in 2007; its employees, including CEO Stephen Shoaff, will join the Ping Identity team.
Founded in 2003, Ping Identity upgraded its Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) platform to improve security and ease of use for end users. At FinovateEurope 2012, the company showed how banks can increase conversion rates and reuse existing infrastructure by implementing social networking logins. Prior to being acquired in June 2016, Ping had raised a total of $128 million in funding and counts Draper Fisher Jurvetson, General Catalyst Partners, and Silicon Valley Bank among its investors.