Ardian invests in Elée, a leading provider of software asset management solutions

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Press release

Ardian invests in Elée, a leading provider of software asset management solutions

  • 21 January 2021

  • Growth

  • France, Paris

6 minutes de lecture

Paris, January 21, 2021 - Elée is partnering with Ardian, a world-leading private investment house, to support its development and growth. 

Headquartered in Paris, Elée is one of the pioneers and the leading independent tech-enabled managed services provider of software asset management and cloud computing solutions in France. Founded in 2010 in Paris by Alain Marbach (former CIO of BNP Paribas and former Executive Committee member for Schneider Electric), Elée received initial funding from Jean-Louis Beffa (former CEO of Saint Gobain) and Denis Kibler (founder of Infra+ and angel investor of Meilleursagents.com). The company has developed an innovative tech-enabled offering that allows its customers to rapidly reduce costs, minimize their risk of non-compliance with software publishers and consistently optimize the management of their software and cloud assets. 

According to Gartner, software spending accounted for $459 billion worldwide in 2020. It is estimated that software customers are currently exposed to tens of billions of dollars of unidentified non-conformity risk. To minimize this risk and optimize companies’ IT asset management, pure players have emerged, such as Elée in France. These pure players will expand both organically, through partnerships and M&A consolidation. 

Elée has over 60 employees, and has developed its own proprietary software, Sambox.io, which has been acknowledged as one of the best solutions on the market at the ITAM Review Excellence Awards 2020. The company is the only French player that is part of market research company Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, which acknowledges the best companies in the sector worldwide. With 40% annual average revenue growth, Elée serves more than 100 clients, including the French State and over half of the CAC40 companies.

With Ardian's acquisition of a minority stake in the business, Elée has the financial resources to accelerate its development in France and abroad, and accelerate the commercialization of its proprietary software, Sambox.io. 

"Our sustained growth since the company’s incorporation is testament to our ability to respond to market dynamics. Ardian’s support is a recognition of our team’s performance, our clients’ satisfaction and will be a major driver in our future development, particularly internationally and in the new ecological challenges of software management." said Alain Marbach, CEO and founder of Elée.

Olivier Roy, Investment Manager in the Ardian Growth team, commented: "Elée's strong expertise and proprietary platform make it a key player in the software asset management market. The company has impressive growth prospects, both in France and overseas."

Geoffroy de La Grandière, Managing Director in the Ardian Growth team, added: "In the current environment, Ardian Growth is pleased to be able to support entrepreneurs with ambitious projects more than ever. We are therefore excited to support Elée and its team in its next growth chapter."

ABOUT ELEE

Elée has been continuously selected in the Statista Les Echos les Champions de la Croissance ranking and has been selected in Gartner's market research guides. Faced with software and cloud spending expected to exceed 25% of IT spending, Elée has made a unique ethical bet for its business model: Elée does not sell or conducts audits for vendors whose software and cloud assets it optimizes. By avoiding any risk of conflict of interest and associated proceeds, Elée has been able to focus on delivering high technicality, methodologies and financial performance in IT procurement to its clients. Customer recognition has made Elée one of the ten world leaders in optimized software and cloud spend management.
Follow Elée on Linkedin

ABOUT ARDIAN

Ardian is a world-leading private investment house with assets of US$103bn managed or advised in Europe, the Americas and Asia. The company is majority-owned by its employees. It keeps entrepreneurship at its heart and focuses on delivering excellent investment performance to its global investor base.
Through its commitment to shared outcomes for all stakeholders, Ardian’s activities fuel individual, corporate and economic growth around the world.
Holding close its core values of excellence, loyalty and entrepreneurship, Ardian maintains a truly global network, with more than 700 employees working from fifteen offices across Europe (Frankfurt, Jersey, London, Luxembourg, Madrid, Milan, Paris and Zurich), the Americas (New York, San Francisco and Santiago) and Asia (Beijing, Singapore, Tokyo and Seoul). It manages funds on behalf of around 1,000 clients through five pillars of investment expertise: Fund of Funds, Direct Funds, Infrastructure, Real Estate and Private Debt.
Follow Ardian on Twitter @Ardian

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

  • Ardian

    • Geoffroy de la Grandière, Olivier Roy
    • Legal, tax and social advisors: Lamartine Avocats (Fabien Mauvais, Clémentine Kervran)
    • Financial audit: Ernst & Young (Jean-Christophe Pernet, Christopher Enger)
  • Elée

    • Alain Marbach, Eric Heissat
    • Legal advisors: Prisma Avocats (Benjamin Fa)

PRESS CONTACTS

ARDIAN - Headland

VIKTOR TSVETANOV

VTsvetanov@headlandconsultancy.co.uk

+44 207 3435 7469