Quest Software, also known as Quest, is a privately held

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

company headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California,

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

. Quest provides cloud management,

software as a service Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software. SaaS is co ...

, security, workforce mobility, and backup & recovery. The company was founded in 1987 and has 53 offices in 24 countries.

History

Quest Software was founded in 1987 in Newport Beach, California, with a line of products for

HP Multi-Programming Executive MPE (Multi-Programming Executive) is a discontinued business-oriented mainframe computer real-time operating system made by Hewlett-Packard. While initially a mini-mainframe, the final high-end systems supported 12 CPUs and over 2000 simultane ...

(MPE). In 1995,

Vinny Smith Vincent Coburn Smith Jr (born 1964) is an American businessman, billionaire, former CEO of Quest Software, and founder of Toba Capital. Education Smith was born in 1964 in Baltimore, Maryland. After graduating from Mount Saint Joseph High Sch ...

joined the company. The following year, Quest entered the database management market with an Oracle SQL database tuning product. In 1997, Quest opened an office in the United Kingdom. Doug Garn joined Quest as the Vice President of Sales in 1998. That same year, Quest added offices in Germany and Australia, and Smith became CEO. In October, Quest acquired

TOAD Toad is a common name for certain frogs, especially of the family Bufonidae, that are characterized by dry, leathery skin, short legs, and large bumps covering the parotoid glands. A distinction between frogs and toads is not made in scient ...

. On August 13, 1999, Quest Software

went public Going public may refer to: * Initial public offering, financial action by a business * Whistleblowing, exposure of previously private information * ''Going Public'' (Newsboys album), 1994 * ''Going Public'' (Bruce Johnston album), 1977 {{Dis ...

. In 2002, a Quest office opened in Japan. The next year, Quest opened new offices in Asia, specifically in Singapore, Korea, and China. In 2004,

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named Quest number one in application management. Doug Garn became President of Quest Software in 2005. Doug Garn became CEO and President, and Vinny Smith became Executive Chairman of Quest in 2008. In 2009, Alan Fudge became vice president of sales. In 2011, Vinny Smith became CEO and Chairman, and Doug Garn became Vice Chairman. On September 28, 2012, Dell announced it had completed the acquisition of Quest Software. In 2016, Quest Software acquired ScriptLogic, and Charonware s.r.o from the Czech Republic. Charonware made CASE Studio2, and after being acquired, Quest folded it into the

TOAD Data Modeler Toad Data Modeler is a database design tool allowing users to visually create, maintain, and document new or existing database systems, and to deploy changes to data structures across different platforms. It is used to construct logical and physi ...

product. On November 1, 2016,

Francisco Partners Francisco Partners is an American private equity firm focused exclusively on investments in technology and technology-enabled services businesses. Founded in August 1999 and based in San Francisco with offices in London and New York City, Franci ...

and Elliott Management completed the purchase of

Dell Software Dell Software was a division of Dell with headquarters in Round Rock, Texas, United States. Dell Software was created merging various acquisitions (mainly Quest Software and Sonicwall) by Dell Inc., the third-largest maker of PCs and now a pr ...

, and the company re-launched itself as Quest Software. On June 1, 2017, One Identity was announced as an independent brand, but remained part of the Quest family of businesses. On September 2, 2020, Quest acquired Binary Tree. On January 5, 2021, Quest acquired erwin, Inc., including erwin Data Modeler. Cork Ireland Office

On November 29, 2021, Clearlake Capital Group LP bought Quest from Francisco Partners for $5.4 billion, including debt.

Awards

The following table includes the listing and the timeline of awards and recognition that Quest Software received since 2004.

References

{{Authority control Software companies based in California Technology companies based in Greater Los Angeles Companies based in Aliso Viejo, California Software companies established in 1987 1987 establishments in California American companies established in 1987 Privately held companies based in California 2012 mergers and acquisitions 2016 mergers and acquisitions Private equity portfolio companies Software companies of the United States