ForgeRock has raised $30 million to expand its IRM platform

Mike Ellis’ ForgeRock enterprise identification management and access software outfit took in $30 million in venture cash this week. IAM is crucial for big enterprise systems to function smoothly. IT managers use it to figure out who you are when you log in. It safely manages passwords, fingerprint readers, and access cards. Typically, this is the software that powers the interfaces that greet you when you forgot your password, prompting you for details like your mother’s maiden name. The acute, enthusiastic Ellis wasted little time trumpeting the considerable capital investment that brings the company’s total capital raised to $52 million. Ellis launched the company in 2010, and now leads a 200 member team. Late stage specialists Meritech Capital Partners led the round, ForgeRock’s third. ForgeRock was originally born in Olso, Norway, but its headquarters is now in San Francisco.

ForgeRock, a company with European roots (UK and Nordics) but now global operations, has become a player in what has become known as – tortuously – “IRM” (identity relationship management). This is a jargony way of saying it tracks customers and the stuff they use and buy, but as you can imagine, this is becoming incredibly complex and the old ways of doing it re changing rapidly. Today it’s announced a $30 million Series C funding round which they claim was oversubscribed. Meritech Capital Partners led the round and existing investors Accel Partners and Foundation Capital also participated. This latest round brings the company’s total funding to $52 million, cash which will be used to built out product and marketing. ForgeRock has developed what it calls an ‘open, unified, massively scalable identity relationship management platform’ to address this identity issue. Founded in 2010 and built on Sun Microsystems’ open-source identity projects, it thinks organisations need a new type of identity platform now that the ‘Internet of people, devices and things’ is exploding. It’s primary competition is Oracle, CA and IBM. However, Mike Ellis, CEO of ForgeRock says: “The legacy platforms vendors were built over the last 10-15 years to solve internal, employee centric identity– small populations primarily behind the firewall. As an open source vendor we built our platform through R&D… We figured out how to transform identity from an internal, employee centric technology focused on lowering support costs and compliance to an external, customer-centric platform focused on driving revenue and growing brand equity.”