In this episode of Behind the Deal, Thoma Bravo Managing Partner Scott Crabill speaks with Imprivata CEO Fran Rosch about how the company is revolutionizing access to critical healthcare systems with its cutting-edge security solutions.
AIR DATE:
March 13, 2025
LENGTH:
40:00
DISCLAIMER:
This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an advertisement. Views expressed are those of the individuals and not necessarily the views of Thoma Bravo or its affiliates. Thoma Bravo funds generally hold interest in the companies discussed. This podcast should not be construed as an offer to solicit the purchase of any interest of any Thoma Bravo fund.
Transcript
ORLANDO BRAVO:
Welcome to Thoma Bravo’s Behind the Deal. I'm Orlando Bravo, Founder and Managing Partner at Thoma Bravo. And that was Fran Rosch, CEO of Imprivata speaking with Thoma Bravo Managing Partner, Scott Crabill.
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Founded in 2004, Imprivata is a cybersecurity company whose products play a critical role in healthcare. Think about the countless times each day that doctors, nurses, and administrators access sensitive patient data on shared devices. Imprivata simplifies and secures this process with its innovative identity management solutions, eliminating the need for traditional passwords.
Thoma Bravo acquired Imprivata in a take-private transaction in 2016. This acquisition has been a prime example of how value can be created through multiple strategic phases. Since then, we've transformed Imprivata from version 1.0 to 4.0 through four major stages of value creation.
Initially, we focused on transforming Imprivata’s operations, significantly improving margins from negative to over 40%. We did this while investing in organic growth and strategic acquisitions.
The next phase focused on transitioning to a recurring revenue model. In the third phase, we completed a strategic merger with SecureLink and focused on cross-sell and up-sell to the customer base.
Now, with Imprivata 4.0, our focus has shifted to product rationalization and expanding both vertically and geographically. We also welcomed Fran as CEO, whose extensive background in cybersecurity with industry leaders like ForgeRock and Symantec makes him well-suited to lead Imprivata into its next chapter.
So today, you’ll hear everything that went on ‘Behind the Deal’ with Thoma Bravo Managing Partner Scott Crabill, followed by his conversation with Imprivata CEO Fran Rosch.
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SCOTT CRABILL:
My name is Scott Crabill. I'm one of the managing partners here at Thoma Bravo. I've been with the firm since 2002. So about twenty-three years now. I focus on investments and application software. I co-lead our application software investing effort with my partner, Holden Spaht, and I focus on investments in our enterprise flagship fund.
One of the areas that I focus on is information technology and software sold into the health care space, whether it be pharmaceutical companies, life sciences, businesses, hospitals, physician offices, home health care agencies, anything that has to do with health care is one of the key areas that I focus on.
Imprivata is a security software company, cybersecurity software company focused on the health care market, primarily hospitals and health systems. Their core product is what's called “Single Sign-On” and all of their products are focused on identity-based security in the hospital. The Single Sign-On product is a badge tap in tap out system for doctors and nurses to get into and out of computers and devices all across the hospital, whether it be a nurse stations in the exam room at the patient bedside, it allows them to quickly get into different systems without having to enter a username or a password and provide security for those that are accessing the system, but also productivity. They don't have to spend a lot of time getting into these systems.
So that's their primary product and they have a number of other identity based security software products for the hospital, like identity governance product, a patient privacy, product, patient identification, secure texting, privilege access management, vendor, privileged access management, and a number of other security type products in the in the hospital space.
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SCOTT CRABILL:
Imprivata is a company that we at Thoma Bravo have a long history with. We've known the business for about ten, eleven years, and we've owned the business for eight years now.
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We first identified the company back in 2013 as part of our typical security software deal sourcing activities. It was on our list of companies that we were following with our security software team and a company that we felt would be a good platform business for Thoma Bravo. The company was venture-backed. It was a private company owned by a group of venture capitalists, probably about a 50 or $60 million business back in 2013. We met with the company, got to know them, got to know the CEO, understood their products, their market position. The company then went public in 2014, and we continued to follow them through their IPO and through their first years as a public company. It was a company that we identified that we really wanted to own, a market leader with about 100 million of revenue growing 20% per year, really high win rates, really high market share, mission critical product and really hit all of our screens in terms of what we like in software businesses also was not profitable at the time. So there was an opportunity for us to improve the profitability of the company.
We bought some stock in the business in 2015, so this pretty unique situation where we actually bought a toehold position in the company. We bought 4.9% of the business, so almost 5% of the business, to get a little bit more attention from the management team, a little bit more attention from the owners, and show that we were really serious about wanting to own this company. And that eventually led to a deal. We made an unsolicited offer to buy the business in March of 2016, and they hired an investment banker in response to that offer that we had made and ran a bit of a process to sell the company. And we were able to prevail in that process. We had a real bit of a leg up, having known the company for three years, having done a lot of outside in work over that three-year period of time, and we were really prepared. So, we were able to sign a deal to buy the company in July of 2016. And we closed the deal in September of 2016.
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SCOTT CRABILL:
The process of acquiring Imprivata had a number of twists and turns and some interesting stories. First, you know, we love partnering with existing management teams. That's a real core part of our philosophy. We love buying these great innovators and turning them into great profitable growth businesses in partnership with management that knows the customer base, knows the product group, and knows the market and is passionate and intelligent and focused. And we like to layer in our focus on driving profitability and profitable growth and the metrics and best-in-class processes for running a software company.
So with Imprivata, you know, we really, really wanted to partner with the existing management team, and we had developed a great relationship with the CEO, Omar Hussain, who had been running the company for fourteen years, when we bought the business, he'd started at the company when it was a $5-10 million business, he'd build it up to almost $150 million in revenue. And had done that by, you know, investing in product investing and sales and marketing resources and really trying to take market share and build the best product in the space, which they did. We got to the business, and the company was a little bit more mature, the market was a little bit more mature. Probably 30, 40% penetrated in the market. Growth had come down from probably 50% per year to somewhere in the 20s, which is still really, really attractive.
But we had a focus on let's build this company for profitable growth and rule of 40, rule of 50 type of software business. So, before we closed the deal, there was about a 3,4 month process to close the deal, public company filings, shareholder meetings, and regulatory approvals. And we really went to work on developing a four-year plan as to how we were going to run the company and what the financial plan was going to be from both the top line and bottom line perspective. And we went up to Omar to try to sell them on how we wanted to build value in the business and really sell him on staying on and building the company with us. And we thought we were going to succeed in that, and myself and my partner Andrew Almeida, and we were really going to try to finalize the pitch.
And we were at this fancy restaurant in Boston, and we had a great dinner with Omar and the CFO, and we got towards the middle of the dinner and we were really going in for the hard sell and said “Hey, Omar, you know, we want you to do this and we love to partner with you” and we were at a kind of main course of our meal. And we had this Sashimi, and both Andrew and I were Midwesterners. I'm from Ohio, Andrew's from Wisconsin. And seafood is not our favorite. And Andrew, I don't think eats it at all. And Omar was trying to get him to try the Sashimi, and Andrew said, “I'll do this if you agree to you know if you agree to go ahead and work with us”. And Omar kind of gave him a wink. And so Andrew tried the Sashimi, and I don't think he liked it, but he did it. At the end of the dinner, we kind of parted ways. And Omar actually told us, “Hey, this isn't really going to be going to be for me. So, I think you guys should move on and find someone else to run the company.”
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And fortunately, we had a backup plan in place. We had a fellow by the name of Gus Malezis, who we had worked with at a previous company, Tripwire. He'd been the chief revenue officer of Tripwire, and he was still with Tripwire. We had sold that business to Belden, and Gus had stepped in to be the GM of that business for Belden for a couple of years, but he had satisfied his commitment to them and was looking for a new challenge and a new opportunity. And we brought Gus in when we closed the deal. He became the CEO of the company.
So the story of Imprivata, post signing the deal and closing the deal. We've owned the company now for eight years, which is a bit unique. Usually, our investment horizon is about a four-year investment horizon. And there's a couple of reasons why we've owned Imprivata for a longer period of time, but it's really given us the opportunity to go through—I look at it as four stages of the investment and Imprivata 1.0 and Imprivata 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0, which we're really in today. 1.0 was our typical investment strategy. We bought a great innovator with a market-leading product, market-leading position, highly recurring revenue stream, high retention rates, and a business that we could turn into a very profitable growth business, turn a great innovator into a great business. And that's what we did for the first four years of our investment. We took a company that was generating no margin to 20% margins in year one and a 40% over over four years. We invested in the go-to-market to continue driving 20% organic growth rates. Gus built what he called the digital identity framework—really to invest in emerging product areas for the company. And that informed a couple of acquisitions that we made.
Carbyne was a competitor and also had an identity governance product that was an extension for Imprivata, and ground control got us into mobile device management and mobile positioning and provisioning, and really over that, the four years, we had a lot of success in that value creation strategy. And we went to launch a process to sell the business in February of 2020. We had doubled the business in four years. We'd gotten those profit margins up. We've made the strategic acquisitions, we hired bankers, we put together materials, we got the management team prepped. The company was doing so well, the future was bright, and we figured everybody is going to want to buy this business. It's going to be absolutely epic.
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SCOTT CRABILL:
And we had a bit of a speed bump two weeks after we prepared to sell the company, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. And we decided there was just too much uncertainty in the world, and we weren't going to get fair value for the business. So, we shut down the process and kept operating the company. And it actually ended up being a bit of a blessing that we weren't able to execute on that on that sale because we got to look at how do we create value in a different way with Imprivata 2.0. And what we did there is we took the company through a recurring revenue transition and began to develop our cloud strategy. When we first bought Imprivata, they were selling perpetual licenses. And today, most software companies sell subscriptions to their software product, and it improves the business model, makes the business model more recurring and more predictable. So in 2020 and 2021, we stopped selling perpetual licenses, and we went 100% to subscriptions and took the company from 30% recurring when we bought it, 50% in 2020, when we were going to sell the business to 75, 80% today.
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We also began developing a cloud version or a SAS version of our core Single Sign-on product and are preparing ourselves for that transition. So, being unable to to sell the company, we were able to look at a value creation strategy in a bit of a different way. And we also made two acquisitions during that period of time. FairWarning in the patient privacy space and Xton in the privilege access management space.
So those were two years of kind of productive value creation. And then we began to look at, hey, should we now go ahead and try to sell the company again? We've, you know, made some more progress and and and maybe now is time to get liquidity. And we stumbled across another really exciting acquisition that took us in a and a different direction. And that was a company called SecureLink in the Vendor Privileged Access Management Space, a company that looked a lot like Imprivata when we bought it back in 2016. It’s a $60 million business had high market share and a really interesting product space in the hospital world, profitable business growing 20% plus per year.
There was a financial sponsor that owned that company, and they did not want to sell the business, but they were really interested in investing with Imprivata alongside of us and becoming our business partner in the deal. And they wanted to be heads up from a timing perspective. So we actually executed on a pretty interesting transaction where we invested out of our new fund. We merged the two businesses, and we set off for a new four-year investment cycle with the company. So we've been through a number of cycles here with Imprivata, which has been been great because it's one of the best businesses we've ever, ever owned and one that we're happy to to continue owning.
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SCOTT CRABILL:
In 2022, we merged Imprivata with SecureLink, and we started a new investment cycle with our new fund. We knew that our CEO Gus Malezis had probably about 12 to 18 months before he wanted to move on, retire, move to a different phase of his career. We'd been talking with Gus about that for a couple of years.
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So we started to prepare for what the leadership would look like in the future for Imprivata. So we got into 2023, and we started a CEO search where we're really looking for, you know, someone who had a ton of experience and really could come in and hit the ground running and continue creating value with Imprivata. And we got lucky with Fran. We had an interesting connection with Fran. Fran had been at VeriSign and at Symantec and as a GM, and he was now the CEO of ForgeRock. And we were able to to to bring Fran in by virtue of the fact that ForgeRock was being acquired by Thoma Bravo and being merged with our portfolio company Ping software. And when Ping and ForgeRock were merged together, we were backing the CEO of Ping. But we got to know Fran really really well, and he was a perfect fit here for what we were trying to do with Imprivata, and so in January of 2024, Fran took over, and he's been CEO of the company for a year now.
Up next, my conversation with Fran Rosch.
Scott and Fran’s Interview
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SCOTT CRABILL:
Welcome, Fran. It’s good to have you here.
FRAN ROSCH:
Thank you, Scott.
SCOTT CRABILL:
Lucky to have you in Studio. We have a board meeting this afternoon, so this worked out from a timing perspective.
FRAN ROSCH:
Absolutely. It’s great to be in San Francisco, and it’s great to be in the Thoma Bravo offices.
SCOTT CRABILL:
Excellent. Well, it’s great to have one of our great leaders in the portfolio, one of my favorite companies, Imprivata. So excited to get into it.
FRAN ROSCH:
Great.
SCOTT CRABILL:
I think it'd be great for you to kind of walk us through your background and maybe talk a little bit about ForgeRock and your experience there and how that business came together with Ping.
FRAN ROSCH:
Great. Well, Scott, thanks so much for having me. And I guess my background is summarized with about 25 years in cybersecurity and identity. So, I worked for some big companies like VeriSign and Symantec, a lot of different roles in cybersecurity and identity during that time, and then had a great experience with ForgeRock, and it made me realize how critical digital identity is in an ecosystem. And we think of it very much as security, right? Because it's making sure that the right person has access. But it's not just security. It's really a lot about usability and experience.
When I end up leaving ForgeRock, when Thoma Bravo acquired ForgeRock and decided to put together with Ping to kind of create an incredibly strong enterprise identity access management company, I just felt like ‘the job is not over’. Identity still feels kind of broken to me. I mean, who likes to create another username and password and go through another MFA or password reset? And so, you know, Imprivata was there. It has an incredible mission around making access simple and safe. So it kind of built on my background, but an opportunity to do something different.
SCOTT CRABILL:
Let's talk a little bit about how you came to Imprivata. How you came to be the CEO of Imprivata. Usually when we're hiring a CEO of an existing company or a new company, there are two ways we usually find them. One is maybe they've been an executive at a former Thoma Bravo portfolio company. We worked with them as CEO in the past, or we go out, hire a recruiter, and canvassed the world and try to source leaders that way and interview folks that we don't necessarily know yet. Try to figure out who's going to be good, but how did it work? It worked a little different for you.
FRAN ROSCH:
Yeah, a little different kind of in between. So I was with ForgeRock for about five years and we went IPO in September of 21, a very good time to go IPO a lot of excitement but before you’re an IPO you know we did talk to some sponsor companies we end up talking to Thoma Bravo at that time so I got to know some of the team, Seth and Andrew and the team. And then, when the board decided to potentially explore other alternatives about a year after IPO, we kind of re-engaged with some of those conversations. So it was a kind of a building relationship. It’s kind of a very long interview process, and so when we finally did close that deal, it seemed natural to stay with Thoma Bravo. And I appreciate the opportunity. And yeah, just really enjoying my time at Imprivata.
SCOTT CRABILL:
Well, it worked out well for us. We got a bit of a two for one: a great company to merge into Ping and a fantastic CEO to come lead Imprivata.
FRAN ROSCH:
Thank you.
SCOTT CRABILL:
At the right time for Imprivata. So we had owned the business seven years by the time you joined the company, and we've been through a number of different value creation strategies, value creation processes. The company was about 150 million of revenue when we bought it, about 400 million. When you joined the business, how did you kind of come in and spend, you know, your first couple of months figuring out the company and the strategy and the direction that you wanted to take the business? And what was that process like for you?
FRAN ROSCH:
Yeah, so I'm really kind of a process-oriented person. So it was a very deliberate process, and it was a 100-day plan, and it was kind of broken into three components: listening, ideation, and kind of decision making and execution. And it was a plan that I shared with the board my first meeting. It was a plan I shared very transparently with the company. It was a plan I shared with our customers. And so I spent the first 30 days like trying to keep my mouth shut and just talk to a lot of different people, a lot of employees, a lot of customers and partners, some industry analysts to really understand the strengths of the company that we wanted to build on and some challenges that we had that we really needed to face.
And then, we went into ideation phase. And that was in February of last year. And we just kind of locked ourselves in the conference room and with a group of about 10 to 12 of, I thought the brightest people, a lot of product and technology people, because I think at our heart that's who we are—and just started, you know, hammering out like, what should we double down on and do more of? What should we back off of? How do we want to invest our dollars for maximum return? And went through a pretty rigorous ideation phase where everybody was encouraged to challenge, challenge, challenge. And then it was pretty clear by the end of February, we kind of coalesced on what the adjusted strategy should be. And then we kind of moved into comms. How are we going to communicate this? How are we going to execute it? You know, share with the board really through March, so it was this very deliberate process. And I think you put us off on a good foot. And to continue our path today.
SCOTT CRABILL:
Fantastic. Let's talk about a few aspects of that plan. And, you know, one interesting aspect is we had, we bought the business in 2016, and the company was really strong in that Single Sign-on product. That was their core product. And they had about 4 or 5 other products. They had a factor authentication for controlled substances. They had a patient identification product, a secure texting product. They were focused on cross-selling into the base. And part of our strategy over six, seven years was to acquire other companies that were selling security products into the hospital space to really give more of a cross-sell opportunity for the business. And that worked well for us. But you came in and had the thought of, you know, “that's great that we have all this stuff to sell, but it's almost too many balls to juggle at one time.” And how do we really drill down and focus on what the biggest opportunities are for the client? How did you think about that product strategy?
FRAN ROSCH:
Yeah, it's amazing what a strong foundation we have at Imprivata. So when it comes to clinicians, doctors, nurses, other technicians, when at the hospital, they have to be able to access critical health systems very quickly and very securely. And they live in a world of what we call shared devices, where you and I, we start a new job, we get a computer given to us for the only one who uses that computer. It's got its own set of challenges. But in a hospital, you could have dozens, 50, 60 people a day use that same computer so fast users switching, it creates a lot of - really technology challenges. And Imprivata, you know, years ago, 2010, 2012 decided to really focus on solving that unique problem. They did an incredibly great job with our OneSign and our EAM product, and that creates an incredible foundation for the company. Some of the challenge now is we're in over 90% of all US health care hospitals provider network. So we've done a really great job penetrating that. So if we're going to continue growth, we have to look at what are the growth levers beyond that. So again incredibly strong foundation, high retention, right?
You know, we continue to add value with more price increases, but we need to open up more opportunities. And you're right, there were almost too many things going on. There were 8 or 10 different products that people were kind of trying to cross-sell. We're trying to expand to new markets. We're trying to get different geographies, different commercial markets. Say it's manufacturing, there's retail, there's airlines, everything. So we really said were the 3 or 4 kinds of strongest levers we have for that growth? And we identified those.
And really, we're going to double down because there was just too much noise for the sales team, too much noise for our customers. And then there was too much mediocrity because we were spreading our resources too thinly. So it was really, really the foundation of our strategy is to recognize the incredible foundation we have with our EAM product. What are the three other products that we think are most likely we can cross-sell in? What are the new markets you want to expand in and just maniacally execute on those versus trying to do too many things?
SCOTT CRABILL:
Great. Let's talk about a few of those things—one, just on the product side. The mobile technology, we talked a little bit about GroundControl being an acquisition that we made and mobile provisioning and mobile device management. And that seemed to be a really big opportunity for us going forward. How do you think about that opportunity for the company?
FRAN ROSCH:
Absolutely, huge opportunity. When you think about it, our mission as a company is to make it simple and safe for users to access the critical information they need to do their services. And for decades in health care, that's meant doctors and nurses typically accessing PCs, right? So that was really what we really focused on. But what we know is that the ecosystem is quickly changing within the health care provider networks, and everything's going mobile, right? No surprise. And so we've got to have the same level of frictionless and secure access to mobile devices that we do today with PCs. And we actually now have Macs as well. So it's really everything a clinician needs to access their work. So whether they're working on iOS or Android, whether they're using Epic or Oracle Cerner or Meditech or any of the other dozens of EHRs that are out there in the world, we've got to make that really simple and safe.
So mobile's a huge growth driver for us. Only about 13% of our customers today are using Imprivata for—to help them manage those mobile devices. And the way that kind of works is a nurse, when he or she starts their shift, they have to go and check out a device. So they can just go out to kind of what we call a docking station, and they get all the access to the applications and services they need to do that health care. It's a very simple and easy way, but it also helps control the security and access the devices. We also see even expansion beyond there into medical devices. We think of all of the equipment, you know, whether it be MRI machines or drug distribution equipment within a hospital, vital signs, machines, all those you need to know who's using those devices at any particular time as well. And so we think there's a lot of opportunity; we stay focused on that clinician and all the different devices and all the different applications and services they use. So it's a huge growth opportunity, mobile kind of being the leading element of that. But it fits into that broader mission that we have as a company.
SCOTT CRABILL:
Well, Fran, you brought great focus to that mobile opportunity, which I think is really exciting for the company. You also mentioned earlier geographic expansion as a possibility, and Imprivata has really been built in the U.S. There have been so much opportunity in the U.S. I think it represents maybe 80% of our revenue. And we have lots of companies in the portfolio where it's only 50%. So there must be lots of opportunity internationally. But, of course, we can't do it all at once. And you've been doing some work on that and have some interesting ideas as to where we might be able to focus internationally. You want to talk about that.
FRAN ROSCH:
Yes. When you think about health care and Imprivata is over 90% in health care, we do have some other verticals we can talk about as well. But when you think about health care, it's really, you know, the challenges that our health care system has in the U.S. are not that much different than any other organizations have around the world. Doctors and nurses and technicians just want to provide great patient care, but they're required to use more and more technology today to do that. That's just the way that the world is going. And they're not always very happy about it. There are challenges with clinician burnout, you know, because they feel like that technology can become a barrier between them and their patient.
So at Imprivata, we do have just such an important mission to kind of remove that friction and make it make the technology kind of easier for them to use. And so that's a challenge that is a global challenge, not just a U.S. challenge. So, the NHS in the UK has been a really strong proponent of Imprivata. We have a lot of the organizations there using Imprivata. Germany passed some funding incentives over the past couple of years to encourage their hospital systems to more aggressively adopt digital approaches to health care. And so there were some funding mechanisms that really accelerated things in Germany. But, you know, the Nordics, Spain, the Western European, you know, like most U.S. companies, start has been a real big growth area for us.
Australia and New Zealand is another, you know, kind of typical growth area. I'm personally quite interested in looking at the opportunities we might have in Japan. It's early days for us. But it's interesting. I think we have about 340 million people in the U.S., and there are about 145 million people in Japan, but they have 70% of the hospital beds that we have. So just a much higher proponent and they are struggling with clinician burnout, having enough doctors in the system. So, if we can help drive more productivity, that's a good thing. So we're doing some investigation over there, spending some time on the ground in Japan to see. But I think international growth will certainly be a big driver for Imprivata over the next couple of years.
SCOTT CRABILL:
That sounds like a great opportunity. And then what about other verticals? You know, we've been focused on health care. What is it about the health care vertical that makes it the right space for improvement? And are there other verticals out there that exhibit similar characteristics that we could sell into?
FRAN ROSCH:
Yeah. One of the challenges that we had to create some really unique IP around is this shared device, fast user switching ecosystem. So there are other industries that have similar dynamics. So we, you know, we, given our size, if we can take 80% of what we have, 90% of what we have in a product and move it over to another vertical, that's great. And so we've identified some of those. Manufacturing, when you think about the manufacturing floor, you can have a lot of kind of kiosks, shared devices, where you could have different, you know, manufacturing employees have to badge in and badge out constantly to get onto that equipment.
Airlines, airlines now, a lot of times are requiring, whether it be pilots or flight attendants, to check out a mobile device and return it at the end of that flight or at the end of that shift retail more and more. When you go into retail, it's about people walking up to you with a handheld device, which they're using to access inventory and payment systems. And then they hand that device after another person. So it's that kind of shared device ecosystem where our unique IP around fast user switching and security. So we're looking at those opportunities to expand there.
SCOTT CRABILL:
Excellent. But let's touch just briefly on the technology aspect of it. Again, back to hospitals, which is the main focus of the company. They tend to be a little bit slower in adopting new technologies. A lot of the software still on prem, on premise, on site. And, you know, many other industries have gone to the cloud. What are you seeing in terms of technology adoption, even with artificial intelligence? Where's the health care market going from a technology perspective?
FRAN ROSCH:
That’s a big question. So, I may go a couple of different directions. And you can, you can bring me back. And I think that let me take the cloud element first, and then maybe we can take the AI.
I think that health care, like a lot of other industries, I think is saying we want to go to the cloud when it makes sense for us to go to the cloud. And if they have applications and services that run very effectively within their application stack, whether that's on prem or in the public cloud of their choice, they're okay with that. And they're very, I think, resistant to do work just for work's sake. They really want to see the value of making that change. But they also see there's so many benefits in size and cloud-delivered services. And so, where it makes sense, you get faster innovation delivered through cloud services. That makes a lot of sense to them.
So how that ends up showing up for Imprivata? There's part of our core access management capability that runs on prem, and they're very happy with that. They've tuned it to the types of vessels that they have. It works incredibly well. But we also now connect that back to our cloud, and we can create new products and services, especially around data, where we can analyze, you know, data or provide more functionality from the cloud. So it ends up being kind of a hybrid environment, which is, I feel, kind of where health care is going that respect cloud.
SCOTT CRABILL:
Excellent.
FRAN ROSCH:
On AI. It's a fascinating time in health care, and something kind of completely generally unrelated to Imprivata is really around ambient listening is the most exciting thing that we hear in health care right now where the—so often that clinicians don't feel like technology works for them, works against them. It's a barrier, but ambient listening is a very exciting element for them where they can be able to have a conversation with the patient and look at the patient instead of a computer and have someone be able to take those notes and then summarize those notes in a very meaningful way. So there's a lot of energy around AI and ambient listening within health care, so that will be great to see how that develops.
From an Imprivata standpoint, you know, we've always felt that making access management decisions should not be black and white. It shouldn't be. Well, everybody's got to have multifactor authentication at this point. It should be about collecting signals of user and device behavior and be able to make a risk-based decision on access. And that is a lot about collecting data, analyzing data, leveraging machine learning and AI to be able to make a risk score, and then to be able to provide the appropriate level of security and access based on that. So we're heavily invested in our data science team and bringing what's considered a kind of a UABA approach to access management, and that's something we're really excited about.
SCOTT CRABILL:
We are really excited about the leadership that you brought to Imprivata and the energy you brought, the strategic direction that you've now set the company. You know, my last question is, you have some incredible ambitions from a technology perspective, a product perspective, a growth perspective, geographic expansion, vertical expansion, you know, to get all that done, having the right team on the field and the right leadership team in place is super important.
How did you, over the last year, think about the leadership team at Imprivata and making sure that you have the right people in the right place for the next 4 or 5 years that really have the capacity, energy, enthusiasm and want to to to make all this a reality?
FRAN ROSCH:
eah. I’d say joining Imprivata, the culture has been incredible. People have been so open to change, which you don't always get right, especially when a company has been successful. People can say, “Well, we just always worked well, and we just keep doing the same thing.” But Imprivata is really open to change. And, like any leader, you assess everybody. Everybody is basically interviewing for that job for the first couple of months.
And there were some incredible rock stars within Imprivata. We have a chief medical officer, Dr. Sean Kelly. When I joined the company, I’m like, “We, a chief medical officer. What’s that all about?” But he's incredible. The passion he has for our company and our customers, the enthusiasm he brings to everything. It's like, how do we take that type of person and nurture and give them more opportunities? But there were certainly other areas that we felt there could be new ideas brought to the company. So we, you know, kind of went through a person-by-person analysis and tried to identify those rock stars that we could nurture and be part of the next generation and then complement them with some new blood, and we're done. Takes about a year to do that, I find. But we have the Imprivata team in place for the future, and we're deep into execution mode.
SCOTT CRABILL:
Well, thank you. Thank you for joining us.
FRAN ROSCH:
Thank you, Scott. My pleasure.
SCOTT CRABILL:
Thanks to Fran for sitting down with us today. To learn more about Imprivata, check out Imprivata dot com
And if you like this episode, be sure to subscribe to “Thoma Bravo's Behind the Deal” wherever you get your podcasts. Fran is also going to join me on next week's episode of “Beyond the Deal,” our mini series, where we get to ask him anything. Catch it on YouTube and in this feed next week. I'm Scott Crabill. Thanks for joining us.
ORLANDO BRAVO:
Behind the Deal is brought to you by Thoma Bravo in partnership with Audacy’s Pineapple Street Studios. Join us next week for more stories Behind The Deal. Thanks for listening.
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Certain statements about Thoma Bravo made by portfolio company executives are intended to illustrate Thoma Bravo's business relationship with such persons rather than Thoma Bravo's capabilities or expertise with respect to investment advisory services. Portfolio company executives were not compensated in connection with their podcast participation, although they generally received compensation and investment opportunities in connection with their portfolio company roles, and in certain cases are also owners of portfolio company securities and/or investors in Thoma Bravo funds. Such compensation and investments subject podcast participants to potential conflicts of interest.
