Case Study

Overview

• Papertrail a leading provider of log management Software as a Service (SaaS) that helps software engineers collect, monitor, search, interpret, and act on log data
• DevOps and IT Infrastructure and Operations teams use Papertrail to (i) detect run time issues instantly, (ii) troubleshoot a user-facing problem, (iii) find the root cause of a complex bug, and (iv) see the inner workings of their software and systems

Situation

• Papertrail co-founders Troy Davis and Eric Lindvall built a growing, profitable business of scale
• The Company was well-positioned for continued growth with a scalable multitenant SaaS solution and multi-channel distribution strategy
• SolarWinds, Inc. (NYSE:SWI) had started assembling the SolarWinds Cloud product family, acquiring Pingdom and Librato in June 2014 and January 2015, respectively
• Papertrail received in-bound interest from a security information and event management company regarding a potential partnership or acquisition
• Cascadia was engaged to help Papertrail find a partner to provide liquidity for shareholders and help the Company become the dominant player in the industry

Cascadia Process

• Cascadia ran a targeted process leveraging relevant relationships with financial sponsors and three strategic buyer categories: (i) Application Performance Management software, (ii) Network Performance Management software, and (iii) Application Delivery software/hardware
• Papertrail was marketed to counterparties in a tailored way, with positioning and potential synergies articulated for each potential counterparty
• SolarWinds was selected as the preferred acquirer and closed the transaction on a highly attractive set of terms and conditions
• The acquisition of Papertrail represents the latest step in SolarWinds ‘ efforts to offer solutions to monitor and manage Cloud-based applications, websites and infrastructure, extending and connecting log management capabilities from on-premise IT infrastructures to Cloud and SaaS-based environments.