Alfresco Software acquired by Private Equity Firm

Sean Michael

Updated · Feb 15, 2018

Alfresco Software has been developing its suite of enterprise content management (ECM) and business process management (BPM) technology since the company was founded back in June 2005.

On Feb. 8, Alfresco announced that it was being acquired by private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners (THL). Financial terms of the deal are not being publicly disclosed.

“Alfresco is an innovative leader in content management and process automation solutions, operating in a large, underserved market,” Laura Grattan, managing director at THL, stated. “Alfresco has an outstanding reputation for enabling customers to collaborate more effectively, optimize business processes, and strengthen compliance, and we look forward to working closely with their talented team to help the company execute its go-forward strategy and accelerate growth.”

Alfresco’s management team includes co-founder and CTO John Newton, who had previously co-founded ECM vendor Document, which was acquired by EMC for $1.7 billion back in 2003.

“It has been quite a journey and we are not done yet!” Newton wrote in a Twitter message. “New technologies mean new opportunities along with new partners.”

The Alfresco platform in 2018 now includes ECM and BPM, as well as governance services to help with enterprise application needs and regulatory compliance issues.

Open Source

Since the company was created, the core of Alfresco has been open source software that is available in community editions. For BPM, the open source project is know as Activiti, while the ECM project is known simply as the Alfresco Community Edition, The community edition of the Alfresco ECM lacks some of the high-availability, storage and security capabilities that are present in the company’s enterprise-grade release.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at EnterpriseAppsToday and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.

Sean Michael
Sean Michael

Sean Michael is a writer who focuses on innovation and how science and technology intersect with industry, technology Wordpress, VMware Salesforce, And Application tech. TechCrunch Europas shortlisted her for the best tech journalist award. She enjoys finding stories that open people's eyes. She graduated from the University of California.

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