As we close 2021 and enter the holiday season, Jordan Rackie, CEO, and Magnus Svenningson, CSO, share their thoughts on the incredible past year for Keyfactor and our customers – and look forward to a hopeful 2022.
Jordan Rackie, CEO of Keyfactor
A look back on 2021
The most meaningful moment of 2021 for Keyfactor happened on June 30th when we officially finalized our merger with PrimeKey. As someone who’s experienced positive and challenging mergers before, I can confidently say that this one has been extremely smooth, affirming our theorized assumptions as to why this was going to amplify our combined opportunity and results.
Why? Two big reasons: culture and product-market fit.
Culture is larger than egos
It’s easy for companies to use a merger as a distraction, leading to slower growth. Individual egos and company biases can influence this distraction.
But when you have built a trusted partnership over 18 months, culture becomes greater than individual egos.
Our combined culture has led to accelerated growth in 2021, ultimately leading to:
- Reaching the 1,000th customer milestone
- Recognition for the Second Consecutive Year with 314% Revenue Growth in Inc. 5000
- Named the Fastest Growing Digital Key and Certificate Automation Provider in North America in Deloitte Technology Fast 500™
- Diversity & Inclusion Efforts honored by Crain’s Business for Notable Achievements
- Named in Inc. Magazine’s 2021 List of Best Workplaces
- Recognition as a sample vendor for machine identity management in Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Identity and Access Management Technologies, 2021 (authored by Trishia Phillips, published 27 July 2021)
Market Validation for Combined Platform
Our merger formed an industry-first machine identity management platform, combining Keyfactor’s certificate lifecycle automation with PrimeKey’s EJBCA.
The ability to use highly scalable certificate issuance, combined with automated deployment of machine identities, has accelerated our addressable market and created more opportunities across complex enterprises as well as emerging IoT and OT use cases.
It’s been encouraging to talk with our existing customer base and get their validation that end-to-end machine identity management will be a part of their strategic plans for 2022.
A look forward to 2022
Although we can’t predict exactly what 2022 will hold, I can share where we plan to invest and how we’re meeting with customers.
To help fulfill our exponentially growing customer demand, we’ll be investing heavily to expand our partner economy, its distribution and delivery networks, under the leadership of our CRO Martin Musierowicz. One of the key reasons I brought on Martin was based on his experience as Head of Global Channels at Atlassian. His leadership will make 2022 the biggest year for partner and ecosystem growth at Keyfactor.
While we will be heads down in our organic growth efforts, with an exciting product roadmap, we will also be heavily monitoring and researching potential acquisitions to strengthen our product portfolio. While there are lots of companies popping up in the machine identity space, I’m confident that Keyfactor will continue to lead in innovation.
Finally, while it’s not guaranteed, I’ll be optimistic and look forward to getting back to a world where we are able to meet our customers and partners face-to-face. I’m sure like many of you, I miss those moments, and I can’t wait to be ‘onsite’, be at trade shows, and network with the best minds and thought leaders in our industry.
Magnus Svenningson, Chief Strategy Officer
A look back on 2021
This has been a truly exciting year for us, with the Keyfactor merger being the major milestone.
Looking back on the last years, I must say that we have been remarkably successful. Over the last six years, PrimeKey grew more than tenfold in revenue and thirtyfold in shareholder value. And this year is no exception; we have been able to follow our far-reaching plans and will close 2021 on a really strong note.
As we grow, we also develop the organization’s capabilities. In general, our team has delivered incredibly well, constantly improving our offering, and clearly showing our two sides: the humble winner and the bold innovator.
Our portfolio is comprehensive and unique, with world-leading PKI and signing software as well as the option to deploy your solution as on-premises software or hardware appliances, cloud solutions, or software-as-a-service. With these major building blocks, we are a great fit for any company. With our joint Keyfactor offering of cryptography, PKI, digital signing, and certificate lifecycle automation, we bring more value than ever to our customers.
Personally, I so much enjoy meeting people in person and unfortunately, that has been difficult also this year. However, even if PrimeKey Tech Days was online in 2021, it became a fantastic opportunity to interact digitally with customers and partners. We had an all-time high of 600 participants from all over the world. I believe this gives a strong message that what we are doing is relevant and in the interest of many.
If this year was a song, it would be “Good life” with the Swedish pop artist Agnes, a sweet song with a good beat on how blessed we are – this translates well to our new position as a company.
A look forward to 2022
The more I see and learn from this industry, I only keep getting more convinced about how large and imminent our opportunity is — as PKI is now viewed as critical infrastructure for digital business success. On the journey of digitalization that most organizations are on, information integrity is one of the cornerstones, and an absolute requirement. And with our end-to-end security solutions, we offer everything you need to solve that.
We see great opportunities ahead, not least in supporting enterprises with scalable security for corporate IT, for example in a Microsoft ecosystem; and allowing for new digital business models, by securing IoT devices with trusted identities.
During next year, we will invest more in supporting the needs of our community users. Being a company with its roots deep in the open-source community, it is important to us that IT security is available to all. Everyone benefits from transparency, and we believe that the open-source foundation brings a higher level of trust.
With the even broader and deeper collective competencies across the company, we are in a better position than ever to deliver a fantastic customer journey from lead generation over delivery to customer success. I look forward to further developing and investing in our world-class technology, supporting customers in using it successfully, and bringing it to the market – all organizations will need it!
